Nations Are Getting Serious About Climate Action. Just Not Serious Enough. There’s a lot more work to do to keep global temperatures at relatively safe levels
There’s a lot more work to do to keep global temperatures at relatively safe levels, according to a U.N. report issued in advance of global climate talks.
If every single country were to follow through on its stated plans (a big if) then global greenhouse gas emissions would be 2 percent to 9 percent lower at the end of the decade than they are today.
But that would still put Earth on track to heat up roughly 2.5 to 2.9 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels by the century’s end, the report found. With every fraction of a degree of warming, the risks from deadly heat waves, wildfires, droughts, storms and species extinctions increase significantly, scientists have said.
"relativly safe levels" is 2 degrees, as we did have that a 120,000 years ago without too much of a problem and it going back down again. Save would be 1.5 degrees.