Paris climate pledges 'will only delay dangerous warming by two years'

Pledges made by countries to cut their carbon emissions ahead of a crunch climate summit in Paris later this year will delay the world passing the threshold for dangerous global warming by just two years, according to a new analysis.

“The action and ambition we have seen to date is far from sufficient and unless it is rapidly accelerated, the difficulties of limiting warming below 2C will be extreme,” said Dr Bill Hare, the founder of Climate Action Tracker and a former Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lead author.