The current rise in greenhouse gas emissions calls into question the hope that the world will achieve Paris climate deal goals aimed at curtailing global warming, Rae Kwon Chung, a UN climate expert and laureate of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th January, 2020) The current rise in greenhouse gas emissions calls into question the hope that the world will achieve Paris climate deal goals aimed at curtailing global warming, Rae Kwon Chung, a UN climate expert and laureate of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, told Sputnik.
Chung is an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) member, who received a personal copy of Nobel Peace prize awarded to the IPCC in 2007 for his contribution to the panel's report on technology transfer. He also serves as Global Energy Prize International Award Committee chairman.
"Frankly speaking I'm very skeptical [about meeting climate goals], because the UN [emissions] gap report already said that we will be above 20-30 gigawatts, which means 50-70% of the current emissions. So we will be above the target, even with NDCs [nationally determined contributions]. It will be highly difficult unless some very drastic consensus and action taken right away instead of growing global emissions so far, while it was supposed to go down," Chung said.
He explained that emissions had to be reduced by 7 percent every year to reach the set target. Instead, they are growing by 1.7 percent every year.
The Paris climate deal, which went into force on November 4, 2016, aims to keep the increase in average global temperature at below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The signatories have so far failed to agree on a regulatory framework for a global carbon trading system, which remains a major stumbling block for the Paris deal to become fully operational.
