Comment

Today the presidents of the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas polluters, China and the US, ratified the Paris Agreement, making the possibility of its entry into force by the end of this year or early next ever more likely.

Last December in Paris, Australia, along with world governments, agreed to keep warming well below 2˚C and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5˚C. What does this mean for Australia’s climate policy and decarbonisation? What would the differences in impacts be for Australia between 1.5˚C and 2˚C of warming? We undertook a study for The Climate Institute to examine these points in detail.

When considering what kind of support developing countries will need to implement their climate plans (Nationally Determined Contributions) under the Paris Agreement, let’s not forget that emission reductions offered in current climate pledges are grossly inadequate to meet the objective of the Paris Agreement to keep warming to 1.5°C, and therefore must be ramped up. If emission reductions are not ramped up, the climate change impacts will be unnecessarily severe, damages will be unnecessarily large, and the costs of adaptation will be unnecessarily high.