Progress On Global Emissions

Europe’s climate change chief is astonished that 149 nations have published their plans to curb carbon emissions.

15:36 18 October 2015

Miguel Arias Cañete, Europe’s climate change chief, is astonished at the positive progress by governments all over the world towards a global deal on C02. So far, 149 nations have already published their plans on how to curb carbon emissions.

Mr Cañete said: "There are many, many reasons to be cheerful. The fact that 149 countries to date have presented the United Nations their commitments to fight global warming is astonishing.

 

"We have countries which together produce nearly 90% of global emissions - so that's a big effort. If we compare it with the Kyoto Protocol - the first time we tried an international agreement to help global warming - there were only 35 countries and they covered less than 14% of emissions.

 

"It's quite astounding. The most important things is that the commitments are not only figures or targets - it shows countries are developing climate policies in a very comprehensive way."

 

He added: "There is no complacency - but we if we had kept on going with business as usual (ever-rising carbon emissions), global temperature would have raised between 3.8 and 4.7C," he said.

 

Professor Jacquie McGlade, chief scientist of the UN environment programme (UNEP) said: "I am very surprised in a positive way - the normal procedure for these events has been governments brought kicking and struggling to the table.

 

"Now I see member states, citizens are willingly pledging for transformational change in society. It's a participatory progress so you do feel it will stick when we leave Paris (the climate conference next month)," she said.

 

"When countries saw the big players - the EU, the USA - put their figures on the table, there's a bit of copycat - which is a good thing.

 

"Some countries sent in their commitments and having seen other countries, they took them away and came back with more ambition. That tells you this is going to be a race to the top, not the bottom." Gabon was one example, she said.

 

"We estimate that current commitments achieve about 3C maximum. That's a big step, although clearly it's not enough."