World to miss 1.5C climate target despite COP26 pledges, says trade secretary
The world is on course to miss its target of limiting global warming to 1.5C, despite the pledges made at COP26, trade secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said today.
Instead, it is expected that the climate will be limited to 1.8C, independent analysis has revealed.
Over the last week, world leaders have committed to strings of pledges that limit fossil fuel use and emissions, in a bid to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
While the talks at the UN’s flagship climate conference have been “huge progress”, Trevelyan noted that the 1.5C target would be a challenge.
“The latest review of all the pledges, commitments and level of investment assessed by independent voices…we think we’re down nearer 1.8 degrees at the moment,” she told BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme.
“We were somewhere around 3C-plus towards the start of this year.”
While it is still impressive more than 200 countries worked towards trimming the 3C forecast down to 1.8C, it follows comments made by climate activist Greta Thunberg, calling the event a “PR exercise”.
The trade secretary added: “Even if we fix the CO2 emissions challenge today, we have 100 years of climate disruption to come.”