A new U.N. environment report warns nations have made very little progress in the fight against climate change, putting the world on track toward dangerous global warming as greenhouse gas emissions remain too high. The U.N.’s annual emissions gap report suggests countries will not be able to prevent global warming from surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is the main goal of the Paris Agreement that was brokered a decade ago. U.N. experts say warming is likely to reach between 2.3 and 2.5 degrees Celsius, with the possibility of even higher temperatures if countries don’t fulfill their current climate pledges. This is interim director of the U.N. Environment Programme Anne Olhoff.
Anne Olhoff: “Well, it’s a guarantee that unless we do things very differently from what we have been doing in the past many years, we will not see an overshoot of 1.5 degrees, we’ll see a permanent breach of 1.5 degrees. So it’s really about making as stringent and as quick cuts as possible overall.”