It is difficult for global warming to stop in less than 8 years

The 26th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP26) started yesterday in Glasgow (Scotland), which will be attended by some 20,000 people, including diplomats, politicians, businessmen, environmental activists and many heads of state and / or government. , Mexico not included.

At COP26, the governments of the 195 countries that signed the Paris Agreement in April 2016 will review the commitments they made then to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions generated by the use of fossil fuels, deforestation, soil erosion and livestock, and thus achieve that: 1) the average global temperature does not exceed by 2 ° C the levels that existed before the Industrial Revolution that began in the middle of the 18th century; and 2) the global temperature rise is limited to 1.5 ° C.

So far, more than 100 countries have already submitted new and revised commitments, but experts say they are not enough to prevent an increase in the planet’s temperature.

A few months ago, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a Special Report to quantify the maximum amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that could be released into the atmosphere to keep global warming below 1.5ºC. Experts estimated that, starting in 2020, an additional 400 Gt (gigatons) of CO2 could be released and still have a 67% chance of limiting warming to 1.5 ° C (one gigaton equals 1 billion metric tons).

The problem is, as I noted above, that everything indicates that in the following decades more than 400 Gt will be generated because most of the 195 countries did not reach the goals that were proposed five years ago.

According to the Climate Action Tracker (ACT) developed by Climate Analytics, a non-profit organization dedicated to climate science and policy based in Berlin, only one country of the 63 that generate 80% of global emissions complied with the targets set in 2016: The Gambia, the smallest of the African countries, with 2.3 million inhabitants, located at the western end of the continent, on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.

The ACT indicates that only seven countries came very close to their goals: Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria and the United Kingdom.

Actions to achieve their goals were insufficient in 35 countries: Germany, Chile, the United States, Japan, Norway, Peru, South Africa, Switzerland and the 27 of the European Union. They were highly insufficient in 15: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, New Zealand, Ukraine and Vietnam. And they were critically insufficient in five: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Singapore and Thailand.

The time to avoid exceeding 1.5 ° C is running out. The Climate Clock (Climate Clock) developed by a group of scientists, educators, artists and activists in the world indicated yesterday, at 4:00 p.m. (Center), that there were only 7 years 263 days and 45 minutes left to achieve it.

Everything indicates that the objective will hardly be achieved and that humanity will face a climate crisis whose effects will be devastating.

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