United Nations Climate Summit Madrid
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The commitments of the international community to reduce CO2 emissions are nowhere near enough to keep climate change manageable. With the previous climate protection efforts, the earth will warm up to 2100 by an average of three degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial level. This emerges from a new study of the "Climate Action Tracker" (CAT), which measures the climate policy of the countries. In the Paris Climate Agreement, just under 200 states committed themselves in 2015 to stabilizing the warming at 1.5 degrees, but at most at two degrees.
Germany received a "highly inadequate" from the CAT for its climate policy, which is being developed by a team of international climate researchers. The federal government lacks a concrete plan on how Germany should achieve its self-imposed goal of becoming climate-neutral by 2050, climate scientist Niklas Höhne told SPIEGEL: "The carbon leakage comes too late, the CO2 price is too low, which is more than insufficient. "
The results of the study will be presented on Tuesday at the World Climate Change Conference in Madrid; they were before the MIRROR in advance. For the CAT, the scientists feed the voluntary commitments of the states for climate protection into a computer model developed by them. From this data, the model calculates the resulting expected warming up to 2100.
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The CAT has individually analyzed 36 nations. Together they account for more than four-fifths of global emissions. Top marks were given to Gambia and Morocco: their planned emissions are in line with the 1.5-degree target, according to the study. Six other states, including India, are on 2-degree course. The EU is one step better than Germany. You're heading in the right direction politically and in terms of emissions, but not fast enough. Researchers like Germany rate the world's largest polluter China as "highly inadequate". After all, the People's Republic is still on course with its political measures to reach its self-imposed goals. At the end of the ranking are the USA, with the grade "critically insufficient".
A year ago, the scientists predicted a plus of 3.2 degrees. Now it's 0.2 degrees less. However, the apparent improvement would mainly be due to changes in the calculation method, Höhne said. Of the states were recently hardly new initiatives. And: "Global emissions continue to grow." Crucial for this is above all the growing CO2 emissions of China.
This puts more pressure on the participants in the Madrid conference to do much more than hitherto for climate protection. In Germany, the key climate-related threshold of plus 1.5 degrees has already been reached; It is 1.1 degrees worldwide. "We see a gigantic gap between claim and reality," said Höhne. To achieve 1.5 degrees, global emissions would have to be halved by 2030; for the 2 degree target, they would have to fall by at least a quarter. "But if you accept the promises made by governments so far, global greenhouse gas emissions will even rise by 2030."
German Environment Secretary Jochen Flasbarth does not expect the current climate change conference to reverse the trend. In Madrid, a tightening of climate targets is not on the agenda; this was only planned for the one-year summit in Glasgow. Although it could be that "a momentum arises and some can be carried away," said Flasbarth. "But I do not think there's going to be a big wave, and in many countries it needs careful discussion, and in the EU too."
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This Wednesday, the new Brussels Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen wants to announce the goal of making the EU climate-neutral by 2050. This would mean that the Union will no longer be allowed to emit greenhouse gases than it takes from the atmosphere at great technological expense. However, three Member States are resisting Leyen's plans: the major coal producers, Poland and the Czech Republic, and Hungary.
The Federal Government has already set itself the goal of Germany becoming climate-neutral by 2050. How this should be achieved, however, is completely unclear criticized researcher Niklas Höhne. In addition, Germany will not only miss its climate target for 2020 to reduce emissions by 40 percent compared to 1990. The country will break with the measures adopted so far, the promise for 2030: by then it should be minus 55 percent.
Above all, the sluggish expansion of wind power is according to Höhne an acute problem: "The wind energy is on the ground." This also damages Germany economically. For example, more jobs were lost in the wind energy sector in the past two years than people still work in the brown coal industry today. Nevertheless, Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier (CDU) plans that wind turbines must be located at least 1000 meters away from housing estates in the future. "If you implement this distance control," says Höhne, "wind energy is dead ashore".
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Worldwide it looks better with the renewable energies. According to the "Climate Action Tracker", renewable energy plants with a capacity of 2400 gigawatts were installed in 2018: twice as much as ten years ago. In the next five years, this number will rise again by another 50 percent, the experts predict. But that is not enough. Because the coal and gas generation is still rising. It is all the more important that governments around the world now stop subsidizing fossil fuels.