A clash over degrees: How hot should nations allow the earth to get?

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt – At the United Nations climate summit that is under way in this Red Sea town in Egypt, countries are clashing over whether they should continue to aim for the 1.5 deg C target, endorsed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

The pledge would stop global average temperatures from rising more than 1.5 deg C above pre-industrial levels. Beyond that threshold, scientists say, the risk of climate catastrophes increases significantly.

The United States and the European Union both say that any final agreement at the COP27 summit should underscore the importance of limiting warming to 1.5 deg C.

But a few nations, including China, have so far resisted efforts to reaffirm the goal, said negotiators from several industrialised countries.

“When I arrived here, I got a really strong sense of backsliding,” said Ms Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland who leads a group of prominent former leaders called the Elders. Along with leaders of nearly 200 of the world’s largest businesses and civil society groups, Ms Robinson signed a letter urging governments at the climate talks to stick with 1.5 deg C.

That temperature goal is “a limit of safe living”, she said, adding: “Every increase of a tiny fraction of a degree is harmful, and we have to claw to prevent going above 1.5 deg C.”

For some nations, the dispute goes beyond digits. Leaders of low-lying island nations say vast swathes of their territories could wash away if global average temperatures were to surpass 1.5 deg C.

At a

Group of 20 summit that took place in Bali,

Indonesia, this week, leaders said they were resolved “to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 deg C”, putting pressure on the diplomats at the climate talks in Egypt.

But with global carbon dioxide emissions reaching a record high this year, some negotiators fear that regardless of what is agreed to on paper, the 1.5 deg C goal could soon be out of reach.

The planet has already warmed an average of 1.1 deg C, compared with pre-industrial levels, and under the current policies of national governments, the world is on pace to heat up 2.1 deg C to 2.9 deg C this century, said a recent UN report.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February

set off a global energy scramble that has complicated efforts to reduce the use of fossil fuels. As natural gas prices soared, countries in Europe and elsewhere switched to burning coal, an even dirtier fossil fuel, and began investing in new natural gas pipelines and terminals that could operate for decades to come.

In the US, Republicans continue to call for expanded oil and gas production and exploration. Fossil fuel companies have even made a number of gas deals with nations at COP27.

All of that could make limiting global warming to 1.5 deg C virtually impossible, former US vice-president Al Gore said on the opening day of the COP27 summit. “The world’s leading scientists and energy experts have told us that any new fossil fuel development is incompatible with 1.5 deg C as the limit to the temperature increase.”

The Paris Agreement includes some ambiguity over what the world’s exact climate goals should be. The pact said that nations should commit to keeping global warming “well below” 2 deg C while “pursuing efforts” to limit warming to 1.5 deg C.

Half a degree does not sound like much, but every fraction of a degree of additional warming could mean tens of millions more people worldwide exposed to life-threatening heat waves, water shortages and coastal flooding, scientists have found.

The consequences are “massively different in terms of food security and the ability to grow crops in certain parts of the world, and in terms of the number of people that are exposed to extreme floodplain risk and extreme heat risk”, said Rockefeller Foundation president Raj Shah.

Yet at this point, keeping warming to 1.5 deg C would require drastic steps that would be costly, politically difficult and disruptive, and would require leaders of nearly all countries to act in concert.

They would need to slash their collective fossil fuel emissions roughly in half by 2030, and then quit adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether by 2050, scientists said. That would require a complete overhaul of all electricity and transportation systems at an unprecedented pace.

By comparison, to keep warming to 2 deg C, nations would have an extra decade to cut their emissions in half. NYTIMES