Unprecedented global carbon pollution causing untold suffering

Washington: More than 11,000 scientists warned Tuesday of "untold suffering" due to global warming, even as another team said Paris carbon-cutting pledges are "too little, too late". The European Union, meanwhile, confirmed that last month was the warmest October ever registered, fast on heels of a record September and the hottest month in July.

Three-quarters of national commitments under the Paris climate accord to curb greenhouse gases will not even slow the accelerating pace of global warming, according to a report from five senior scientists. The sobering assessment came a day after President Donald Trump formally notified the United Nations of the US withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate pact, triggering concerns of how other nations might react.

"With few exceptions, the pledges of rich, middle-income and poor nations are insufficient to address climate change," said Robert Watson, who chaired both the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN's science body for biodiversity. "As they stand, the pledges are far too little, too late." In parallel, more than 11,000 scientists sounded a five-bell alarm in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience, noting that the world had failed to act on global warming despite the accumulation of evidence over 30 years.

"We declare, clearly and unequivocally, that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency," the statement said. Emissions of the gases warming Earth's surface must drop 50 percent by 2030 and to "net zero" -- with no additional carbon entering the atmosphere by mid-century -- if the Paris treaty's goal of capping warming at 1.5 to 2.0 degrees Celsius is to be met, the IPCC concluded last year.

And yet 2018 saw unprecedented global carbon pollution of more than 41 billion tonnes, two per cent higher than 2017, also a record year. Global temperatures have increased 1 C above pre-industrial levels -- enough to boost the impact of deadly heat waves, floods and super storms -- and are on track to rise another two or three degrees by the end of the century.

"Failing to reduce emissions drastically and rapidly will result in an environmental and economic disaster," said James McCarty, a professor of oceanography at Harvard University, and co-author of the analysis of voluntary Paris pledges to reduce carbon pollution. Just over half of greenhouse gas emissions from power, industry, agriculture and deforestation -- the main drivers of global warming -- came from four nations last year: China, the United States, India and Russia.

Accounting for 13.1 percent of the total, the US has turned its back on the Paris deal. "China and India could say 'damn it, we're going to demonstrate to the world that we are climate leaders'," Watson told AFP. "Or they could say 'if the US is not going to do it, we're not going to either'. It could go either way." China has said it will lower carbon intensity and peak emissions by about 2030. But the size and staggering growth of its economy will likely overwhelm such marginal improvements, the scientists said.