One Month After the Copenhagen Accord, Emissions Reductions Consistent With 2° Target Have Not Materialized

By Elizabeth Sawin
February 4, 2010

With January 31st as the ‘soft’ deadline for countries to submit to the UNFCCC their proposals for greenhouse gas emissions reductions under the Copenhagen Accord we’ve been hearing the question from colleagues and the press: do these submissions bring the world any closer to the goal of limiting temperature increase to 1.5° or 2°C?

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p style=“text-align:left;“>We’ve ‘run the numbers’ and our most recent  analysis shows essentially the same results that we reported December 19th at the close of the Copenhagen Summit: if current proposals were fully implemented average global temperature would overshot the 2° goal and would in fact  increase by approximately 3.9°C (7.0°F) by 2100.

The  Climate Scoreboard shown here, which reports the collective impact of current proposals on future temperatures, hasn’t begun the downward movement so many people around the world want to see.

The January 31 deadline marks the first milestone on the road to COP-16 in Mexico.We continue to believe that one of the best ways to make 2010 the year of the fair, binding, science-based global climate treaty is to make sure that voters, legislators, negotiators and heads of state all remain vividly aware of the gap between current proposals and the emissions reductions that the science tells us are needed.

Download the Scoreboard widget  here to help keep the gap in the public view so that it can be seen, understood, and addressed.