World climate pledges still 'nowhere near' hitting emissions targets: UN

International climate pledges remain far off track to limit rising temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, says a UN, less than two weeks ahead of high-stakes negotiations to tackle global warming.

The UN's climate experts have said emissions – compared to 2010 levels – need to fall 45 percent by 2030 in order to meet the Paris deal's more ambitious goal.
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The UN's climate experts have said emissions – compared to 2010 levels – need to fall 45 percent by 2030 in order to meet the Paris deal's more ambitious goal.

The United Nations says current pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions put the planet on course to blow past the limit for global warming countries agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

The UN climate office said on Wednesday that its latest estimate based on 193 national emissions targets would see temperatures rise to 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial averages by the end of the century.

That’s a full degree higher than the ambitious goal set in the Paris pact to limit warming by 1.5 C (2.7 F).

The report found that emissions will also increase by 10.6 percent by 2030 from 2010 levels, a slight decrease from the 13.7 percent estimates last year.

Scientists say emissions of planet-heating gases actually need to be cut by 45 percent by the end of the decade.

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Keeping the goal alive

“We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world,” the head of the UN climate office, Simon Stiell, said in a statement. 

“To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years.”

The report was released ahead of next month’s UN climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where countries will again try to ratchet up their targets.

READ MORE: US unveils plan to capture, store CO2 directly from air

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