UN’s ‘global stocktake’ on climate is offering a sober emissions reckoning − but there are also signs of progress

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🗞️ Driving the news: The United Nations' Global Stocktake on climate change, a key feature of the upcoming COP28 conference, presents a sobering view of global emissions
• The stocktake reveals that current policies and promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions are insufficient, leaving the world on a trajectory that falls far short of the Paris Agreement's aim to limit warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial temperatures

🔭 The context: This stocktake is a critical component of the Paris Agreement, designed to assess collective progress towards limiting global warming as it involves a comprehensive review of emissions data, climate policies, and mitigation efforts worldwide
• The report highlights that governments worldwide plan to produce twice as much fossil fuel in 2030 than would be allowed under a 1.5 C warming pathway

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: The stocktake's findings underscore the significant gap between current efforts and the targets set in the Paris Agreement
• Limiting global warming to 1.5 C rather than 2 C could have accumulated global benefits exceeding US$20 trillion, but global greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2022, surpassing pre-pandemic levels, with the global average temperature briefly breaching the 1.5 C warming limit in 2023.

⏭️ What's next: The report emphasizes the need for rapidly reducing carbon emissions from all economic sectors, accelerating the adoption of renewable energy, implementing measures to stop and reverse deforestation, and deploying clean technologies such as heat pumps and electric vehicles on a wide scale

💬 One quote: UN Secretary-General António Guterres criticized the extensive profits made by “entrenched interests” in the fossil fuel sector and stressed the importance of transitioning away from fossil fuels

📈 One stat: Fossil fuels currently make up 80% of the world's total energy consumption, resulting in an all-time high of 36.8 gigatonnes of CO2 from both energy combustion and industrial activities in 2022

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