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This week ends with a plea against rising greenhouse gas emissions. On the plus side, some countries like China and the European Union have started taking action and are decreasing their fossil fuel use.
But the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a record high last year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, warning there was “no end in sight” to the trend.
In 2022, global average concentrations of carbon dioxide were a full 50% above the pre-industrial era for the first time, the U.N. weather agency said.
“Despite decades of warnings from the scientific community, thousands of pages of reports and dozens of climate conferences, we are still heading in the wrong direction,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
Under current national climate plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), emissions can be expected to rise 9% above 2010 levels by the end of this decade even if NDCs are fully implemented, the U.N. report found.
But some countries are switching gears and heading in the right direction.
China’s greenhouse emissions could start going into “structural decline” as early as next year as power generation from fossil fuels starts to fall, analysis from the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) showed.
Plus, greenhouse gas emissions in the EU fell by more than 5% in the second quarter of 2023, with the biggest decline recorded in electricity and gas supply, statistics agency Eurostat said.
The EU’s emissions between April to June amounted to 821 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents, down 5.3% from a year earlier, while the bloc’s economy remained almost stable, registering a year-on-year variation of 0.05% in the period.
