Limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees now looks impossible

Last year at the UN climate change talks in Cancun, it was agreed that cutting emissions sufficiently to limit the world’s temperature increase to 2°C would require a far‑reaching transformation of the global energy system. To limit the world’s temperature increase to 2°C, it was agreed that the long-term concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would need to be limited to around 450 parts per million of carbon-dioxide (CO2). Sadly, the International Energy Agency has just released figures indicating that energy-related CO2 emissions in 2010 were the highest ever, reaching 30.6 Gigatonnes (Gt). This means that to achieve the 2020 target, where emissions must not be greater than 32 Gt, emissions will need to rise less over the next ten years in total than they did between 2009 and 2010.

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