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Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are likely to rise in the next 15 years, missing by a wide margin a target proposed for United Nations talks on global warming, a team of researchers said. Without further policies to stem pollution from fossil fuels, emissions will be 27 percent above 2005 levels by 2030, the researchers at Climate Action Tracker said in a report Friday. The findings cast doubt on a pledge by Prime Minister Tony Abbott to lower emissions by at least 26 percent over the same time period.

Australia’s U-turn on climate laws mean it will generate three years worth of extra national emissions by 2030, according to analysts.Prime minister Tony Abbott ditched a carbon tax and toned down renewable targets after winning office in 2013.With this strategy, the country’s emissions are set to increase 27% on 2005 levels, Climate Action Tracker (CAT) revealed on Thursday.

Australia is behind other industrialised nations in having policies in place that can meet its promised 2030 target to cut greenhouse gases, a new assessment of its international climate change pledge has found. The analysis by the global project, Climate Action Tracker, says with only the Abbott government's direct action scheme and the renewable energy target installed at the national level, Australia is on track to fall short of its 2030 pledge and will in fact see emissions rise by the end of the next decade.

The US’s plan to reduce power sector emissions by 30% by 2030 on 2005 levels is the jewel in the crown of US mitigation policies. Under current proposals economy-wide cuts in total emissions will be much less than 30%; Climate Action Tracker (CAT) estimates emissions will be just 10% below their 2005 level.

Though small and developing, Costa Rica is a great example of what it takes to execute a pledge of carbon neutrality. According to Climate Action Tracker, Costa Rica is one of only three countries—along with Bhutan and Morocco—doing its fair share to keep temperature increases from climate change below 2 degrees Celsius, a threshold scientists see as the upper limit to avoid catastrophic impacts.

At the UN climate change talks later this year, a new protocol called COP21 is set to be adopted at the meeting, to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that is due to expire. The protocol requires countries to reduce greenhouse emissions as global-warming in increasing due to human-made carbon-dioxide emissions. Scientists say that in order to prevent the 2 degree warming, the Earth should completely stop carbon-dioxide emissions. With the current state of pollution, the planet could face 2.9 to 3.1 degree warming, according to Climate Action Tracker.

Current pollution reduction pledges for the Paris agreement put the world on a much more dangerous path, one leading to an expected 2.9 to 3.1 degrees Celsius of warming, according to the Climate Action Tracker, which measures the impact of the Paris pledges. (Without those pledges, the situation would be much worse, with global temperatures expected to rise 3.6 to 4.2 degrees, the tracker shows).In the United States, President Barack Obama recently announced the Clean Power Plan, which aims to use the U.S. government's regulatory authority to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants."It really bends the curve" in global emissions, said Bill Hare, founder and CEO of Climate Analytics, a nonprofit that tracks pollution reduction pledges against the 2 degrees goal. "That is new."

Last November, China pledged to halt the growth in its emissions by 2030. That target has been "applauded by the international community given China's emissions have been growing at rates of 5% to 8% over the past decade and a half," says Canadell, who is also executive director of the Global Carbon Project, an international consortium of scientists studying the global carbon cycle. Not all climate scientists agree, however; the Climate Action Tracker, an alliance of four European research groups, rates the targets "inadequate."

On 11 August 2015, the Australian Government submitted its long awaited Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC Secretariat). Australia’s submission brings the total of INDCs received by the UNFCCC Secretariat to 26 comprised of 53 countries. INDCs are indications of each country’s post-2020 emissions reduction targets and actions that the country intends to take, having regard to its own domestic priorities, circumstances and capabilities. Climate Action Tracker is also assessing the INDCs as they are submitted, which can be viewed here.

Developed nations are on track to cut their greenhouse emissions by almost 30 percent by 2030, Reuters calculations show, falling far short of a halving suggested by a U.N. panel of scientists as a fair share to limit climate change. Last year the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said rich nations that were members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1990 should halve emissions by 2030 from 2010 to limit warming. A Climate Action Tracker [...] estimates that current pledges put global temperatures on track to rise by 3.1 Celsius by 2100, threatening ever more droughts, floods, heat waves and rising sea levels.