Takeaways: Bold proposals and ‘net zero’ criticism at COP27
The international climate change agreement COP26 failed to deliver on its key goal of keeping the average global temperature rise to less than 1.5°C, let alone 0.7°C.
But as more people and governments around the world consider whether to approve the 2015 Paris Agreement next year, it is vital that they make their own decisions based on the knowledge of its strengths and weaknesses.
We have highlighted several of these strengths below, but the IPCC’s most significant one, the recognition that the Paris Agreement will have to be revised in order to keep warming to less than 1.5C, is perhaps the most crucial.
It is the foundation of the Paris Agreement in terms of what the world can achieve if we continue to burn all the fossil fuels of the past century. This is why many green climate change policies must be based on this new understanding.
1. More ambition
The Paris Agreement says the goal for the long-term climate goal is to ‘end all fossil fuel use and adopt fair, ambitious, and consistent nationally determined contributions from all countries’.
But there is no indication in the Paris Agreement that the 2°C target can be met with just staying under the Paris Agreement’s 0.7°C objective.
In effect, the Paris Agreement leaves the door open for policy change to meet future targets. The agreement is not a commitment to a 2°C target. It’s a commitment to ‘a global goal to limit the increase in global average temperatures to less than 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures with a goal of holding to a limit of 1.5°C’.
This goal for limiting global temperatures to 1.5C is the same goal as the goals we set at the COP21 in Copenhagen, the COP15 in Durban and the COP18 in Bonn.
At COP21, we set a target of limiting global warming to more than 2°C, but we also set a target