Australian scientist Josep G. Canadell of the tracking programme says that the goal ‘requires an immediate, large and sustained global mitigation effort’ if the situation can be salvaged at all. However, even though 20 years of negotiations lead to nations around the world pledging to limit global warming, many nations appear reluctant to make the kinds of changes required to accomplish those stated aims. The agenda that emerged from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is a modest one, with no new emissions targets and little progress expected.
According to Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the climate convention, the global negotiations were necessary, but insufficient as ‘We won’t get an international agreement until enough domestic legislation and action are in place to begin to have an effect,’ she said. ‘Governments have to find ways in which action on the ground can be accelerated and taken to a higher level, because that is absolutely needed.’
There is a slow decline of emissions in advanced or developed countries, due to a combination of economic weakness, transferring some manufacturing to developing countries and consciously trying to limit emissions. However, according to new figures, the emissions made by developing countries like China and India continue to grow and more than match the decline of emissions in other countries.
The overall emissions leaped up by 3% in 2011, which is expected to have risen another 2.5% in 2012. The fastest growing emissions are coal-related, rising over 5% in 2011 compared to 2010. Coal is the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, and Gregg H. Marland, a scientist at Appalachian State University who has tracked emissions for decades, warns ‘If we’re going to run the world on coal, we’re in deep trouble’. This could include higher seas and greater coastal flooding, more intense weather disasters like droughts and heat waves, and an extreme acidification of the ocean. These things are believed to be already occurring by many experts, but they are expected to get worse.