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To have a fighting chance at keeping global temperature increases below 2 degrees Centigrade - the most widely agreed 'safe' level of climate change - countries will have to stump up significantly deeper emissions cuts than they've promised under the recen
To have a fighting chance at keeping global temperature increases below 2 degrees Centigrade - the most widely agreed 'safe' level of climate change - countries will have to stump up significantly deeper emissions cuts than they've promised under the recently agreed Copenhagen Accord.
That's the message from a new study released by the U.N. Environment Program, which uses modelling based on estimates from nine leading climate centres.
The gap between what's promised and what needs to happen amounts to about a 10 to 16 percent shortfall, depending on whether countries meet their most ambitious goals or their least ambitious ones - assuming, of course, that they meet any of them.
That gap "needs to be bridged and bridged quickly if the international community is to pro-actively manage emissions down in a way that makes economic sense," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Program.
The study involves "a great deal of assumptions underlying these figures," he noted, "but they do provide an indication of where countries are and perhaps more importantly where they need to aim."
If countries can be encouraged to boost their promised voluntary emissions cuts to fill the shortfall, the world has 50-50 odds of keeping global temperature increase below 2 degrees C, the study said.
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