Losing Ground in the Climate Fight

The world is on track to have warmed by 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) on average by the end of the century compared with preindustrial times, according to an annual report from the U.N. that tracks the disparity between global climate goals and reality. The temperature change is greater than the one predicted by the organization last year by around 0.3 degrees Celsius. About half that difference comes from the United States abandoning its climate pledge, my colleague, Chico Harlan, reports. The report lands at a time when economic interests have been edging out climate priorities around the globe. This week’s news delivered two new examples: Brazilians are preparing to head to the polls for an election with enormous implications for the future of the Amazon rainforest. And Britain, facing an energy squeeze exacerbated by the war in Iran, just approved new gas drilling in the North Sea . The emissions gap In the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, most of the countries in the world agreed to try to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times, and preferably to 1.5 degrees. Last month, the U.N. formally acknowledged the world’s failure to meet the 1.5 goal. Every bit of warming beyond 1.5 Celsius is known as “overshoot.” Now, the trillion-dollar climate question is how much overshoot is inevitable and how much can realistically be avoided. In a scenario where countries manage to slash emissions by almost 20 percent in the next four years — a far more aggressive drawdown than current plans suggest — temperatures would rise by 1.7 or 1.8 degrees by the middle of the century, then fall back to an uptick of 1.5 degrees over the following 50 years. Global average temperatures have already risen by 1.4 degrees Celsius since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The implications of that increase are still coming into focus. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in . Want all of The Times? Subscribe .