Climate progress stays slow as the UN calls for an atomic explosion

The UN climate chief warned against the use of upcoming climate talks as a turning point for tackling greenhouse gas emission problems in the early 2030s

A UN analysis found that countries’ climate action plans are still far behind the things that are needed to limit the damage caused by global warming and reduce emissions.

The report shows that emissions from burning fossil fuels will go up by 9% by 2020, but will be 2% lower by the year of the Paris Climate Accords because of some action from countries to switch to cleaner energy. The world needs to emit 45% less by then, according to climate scientists.

The United States and China agreed to start talks on energy policies in order to strengthen their climate action during the critical decade of the 2020s. Experts say the world needs to act now to have any chance of achieving the agreed-upon goal of limiting the average increase in global temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).

He called for net zero, where a nation only takes back carbon dioxide it releases into the atmosphere in developed countries and no carbon is taken back out of the atmosphere in developing nations.

The UN’s climate chief urged that upcoming international climate talks be used as a turning point, where governments can get on track with plans to cut emissions in line with the Paris accord to limit global warming to between 2 and 2.5 degrees Celsius.

The report shows there was no time left for delays, according to Sultan al-Jaber, the president of the COP28 climate talks.

Extreme weather events charged by the warming atmosphere are increasing in magnitude and frequency around the world. The last yearlong period was the hottest on record. Many recent droughts, floods and storms were found to have fingerprints of human-cause climate change, according to attribution scientists.

“It’s already hell for a lot of people,” said Disha Ravi, an Indian activist with the youth climate group Fridays for Future, of current extreme weather. “I sometimes wonder if they (leaders) care about lives at all.”

United States and China pledged to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030, and they will work together to stabilize the U.S.-China relationship

David Waskow, the international climate director at the World Resources Institute, said that methane has been absent from China’s previous commitment under the Paris Agreement. He noted that China is the largest producer of methane, a gas that slows the rate of global warming.

The joint announcement came on the eve of a summit between Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping that is aimed at stabilizing the rocky U.S.-China relationship.

Both countries “are aware of the important role they play” and “will work together … to rise up to one of the greatest challenges of our time,” they said in a statement released Wednesday in Beijing and Tuesday evening in Washington.

They reiterated a pledge made by the Group of 20 nations, of which both are members, to pursue efforts to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030. Chinese companies are looking to sell wind and solar power equipment abroad, having invested heavily in factories for their manufacture.

“If the two countries can work together to shore up the buy-in for the target, that will very considerably smooth the way for having it adopted,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, the lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

The government decided last week that it will start making “capacity payments” to coal power plant operators next year to keep them open when revenues fall as electricity production is replaced by renewable energy.

Waskow felt disappointed that the joint statement didn’t make a commitment to phase out fossil fuels. Coal power plants are a better source of power for periods of peak demand as China has rapidly expanded in wind and solar power, even as it encourages the construction of coal power plants.

An action plan was issued last week by the Chinese government to control methane emissions. Coal mines, oil and gas fields, farms, landfills and sewage treatment plants are major emitters.