Current policies will bring ‘catastrophic’ climate breakdown, warn former UN leaders

The policies currently in place to tackle the climate crisis around the
world will lead to “catastrophic” climate breakdown, as governments
have failed to take the actions needed to fulfil their promises, three
former UN climate leaders have warned.

There is a stark gap between wha governments have promised to do to protect the climate, and the measuresand policies needed to achieve the targets. At the Cop26 summit last
November, countries agreed to bring forward plans to limit global heating
to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – the limit of safety, according to
scientists. They have so far submitted pledges that would limit
temperatures to under 2C.

But the policies and measures passed and
implemented by governments would lead to far greater temperature rises, of
at least 2.7C, well beyond the threshold of relative safety, and
potentially as much as 3.6C. That would have “catastrophic” impacts, in
the form of extreme weather, sea-level rises and irreversible changes to
the global climate.

The three living former directors of the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change have written together in Wednesday’s
Guardian – the first time they have written jointly in a newspaper – of
the disastrous consequences of failing to match national pledges on the
climate with concrete actions and policies to follow them through.

 Guardian 2nd June 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/02/current-policies-will-bring-catastrophic-climate-breakdown-warn-former-un-leaders

June 4, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized