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The industrialized countries’ pledges to limit their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 are far from the cuts recommended by experts to avoid global warming.
In the run-up to a new UN climate pact due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December, the industrialized countries – viewed as a whole – have now promised cuts in their emissions of greenhouse gases between 10 and 14 percent below 1990 levels, Reuters calculations show.
“These are very weak targets overall,” says Knut Alfsen, Research Director of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, according to Reuters.
Russia, the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, announced Friday that by 2020, the nation will limit emissions to 10-15 percent below 1990 levels. The collapse of the Soviet Union actually means that Russia’s pledge will mean a rise from today’s levels, as its emissions today are more than 30 percent below 1990 levels.
“I would personally hope (Russia) could be much more aggressive,” said Bob Watson, Chief Scientific Adviser to Britain’s Environment Ministry and a former head of the UN Climate Panel, according to Reuters.
Developing nations led by China and India urge industrialized countries to cut emissions by at least 40 percent, arguing that developed nations are historically responsible for most emissions.
“If the developed countries are not willing to go to that extent (25-40) then clearly we’re going to end up with temperatures much higher and therefore other impacts which are going to be substantially worse than two degrees would imply,” says Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the UN Climate Panel, according to Reuters.
He fears that failure to make such deep cuts will put the world on a path towards “dangerous” warming of more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial levels.
The US President Barack Obama plans to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 – a cut of 14 percent from 2007 levels – and by 80 percent below 1990 by 2050. The European Union plans to cut emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels and by 30 percent, if other nations follow suit.
