Current pledges for curbing carbon emissions will doom the world to global warming of 3.5 C, massively overshooting the UN target of 2 C, researchers reported at the climate talks here on Tuesday. Output of heat-trapping carbon gases is rising so fast that governments have only four years left to avert a massive extra bill for meeting the two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) target, they said. “The current pledges are heading towards a global emissions pathway that will take warming to 3.5 C goal (6.3 F),” according to an estimate issued by a consortium of German researchers. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday urged deadlocked climate talks in Durban to work urgently for solutions, saying the future of the planet was at stake. “It would be difficult to overstate the gravity of this moment,” Ban said at the start of a four-day meeting of the world's environment ministers. “Without exaggeration, we can say: the future of our planet is at stake people's lives, the health of the global economy, the very survival of some nations.” The 12-day talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have been hamstrung by a row over the future of the Kyoto Protocol, the world's only legally-binding treaty for curbing greenhouses gases blamed for climate change. Pointing to economic problems and “abiding political differences” about how to tackle climate change, the UN chief said everyone had to be “realistic” about the chances of a breakthrough in Durban. The report, compiled by Climate Analytics and Ecofys, which are German firms that specialise in carbon data, was issued on the sidelines of the 194-nation UN talks in Durban. The 2 C (3.6 F) goal, initiated at the stormy Copenhagen Summit of 2009, was enshrined at last year's conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) along with a less feasible target of 1.5 C (2.7 F). Accompanying these objectives is a roster of pledges by nation-states about what they intend to do to rein in their emissions. The promises mark the first time that all countries have been coaxed into declaring specific carbon-curbing actions. But the measures are not subject to any international compliance regime and do not incur any penalties if they are not met.
