World on ‘catastrophic’ path to 2.7C warming: UN

PARIS: A failure to slash global emissions is setting the world on a "catastrophic" path to 2.7 degrees Celsius heating, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned on Friday just weeks before crunch climate talks.

His comments come as a United Nations report on global emissions pledges found instead of the reductions needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change, they would see "a considerable increase".

This shows "the world is on a catastrophic pathway to 2.7-degrees of heating," Guterres said in a statement. The figure would shatter the temperature targets of the Paris climate agreement, which aimed for warming well below 2C and preferably capped at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

"Failure to meet this goal will be measured in the massive loss of lives and livelihoods," Guterres said. Under the landmark 2015 Paris deal, nations committed to slash emissions, as well as to provide assistance to the most climate-vulnerable countries.

But a bombshell "code red" for humanity from the world’s pre-eminent body on global warming in August warned that Earth’s average temperature will be 1.5C higher around 2030, a decade earlier than projected only three years ago.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that emissions should be around 45 percent lower by 2030 compared with 2010 levels to meet the 1.5C goal. The UN said on Friday that current pledges by 191 countries would see emissions 16 percent higher at end of the decade than in 2010 -- a level that would eventually cause the world to warm 2.7C. "Overall greenhouse gas emission numbers are moving in the wrong direction," said UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa in a press conference.