World must cut emissions by 18% in four years ‘to find our way back’, UN says — SkimNews
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- UN Environment Programme (Unep) states the world must cut emissions by 18% within four years and 45% by 2035 to limit temperature rise to 1.7°C, stressing the 1.5°C window has closed.
- Inger Andersen, executive director of Unep, warns that procrastination has ended the chance to stay within 1.5°C, urging nations to minimize the overshoot and 'find our way back'.
- Governments are failing to turn long-term climate pledges into short-term action, with 2025 emissions flat but not yet in decline, and current policies leading to 2.8°C of warming.
- Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, calls on major fossil fuel producers like the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to stop denying climate reality and halt expanding fossil fuel production.
- Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, emphasizes that solar and wind growth prove solutions exist, but political leadership is not moving fast enough away from fossil fuels.
- Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute, stresses that science is clear: emissions must fall below 35 gigatonnes by 2035, not the projected 50, and political action—not more data—is the bottleneck.
- Unep identifies cutting methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than CO₂, as a key near-term strategy to slow warming quickly.
Why it matters: Every five years of current emissions raises global heating forecasts by 0.1°C, making near-term cuts urgent. With pledges leading to 2.6°C and policies to 2.8°C, the gap threatens to trigger irreversible climate tipping points, putting billions at risk from extreme heat and weather.
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