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Brazil, China, South Africa and the US have questioned whether Australia’s current climate policies will see the country able to make future greenhouse gas cuts. In response, Australia’s Ambassador Peter Woolcott insisted the country would meet its 2020 goal, a view not shared by analysts at the Climate Action Tracker, who say emissions will likely rise 12-18% above 2000 levels.

Australian delegates have been questioned about the government’s climate policies at a United Nations conference in Germany. Countries questioned Australia’s scrapping of the carbon tax and whether the federal government’s $2.55bn direct action policy will be enough to meet Australia’s emissions reduction target of five per cent by 2020. Further work is needed to ratchet up commitments, said a report of the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) initiative, issued on the sidelines of the Bonn talks.

Nessuno degli impegni sul clima resi pubblici fino a questo momento è coerente con il target dei 2 °C. Anzi: le promesse arrivate fino ad oggi da 38 Paesi per ridurre le emissioni di CO2 in vista della COP 21 di Parigi, potrebbero al massimo allontanare il tipping point (punto di non ritorno) mondiale di soli due anni. Sono le conclusioni sconvolgenti di una nuova analisi diffusa oggi da Climate Analytics, organizzazione no profit con sede a Berlino. La ricerca, guidata da Bill Hare, un ex componente dell’IPCC, ha scoperto che gli impegni assunti davanti all’ONU fino ad ora potrebbero ritardare la soglia critica dal 2036 al 2038.

In March, the White House pledged that, by 2025, the United States would reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by at least twenty-six per cent. The centerpiece of the Administration’s plan is a set of new power-plant regulations expected to reduce demand for coal by compelling utilities to shift toward less carbon-intensive fuels, mainly natural gas, and carbon-free energy sources like wind and solar. Independent analysis (Climate Action Tracker) suggests that the White House’s plan is insufficient to produce the cuts it has promised, but we’ll leave that issue aside for the moment.

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.

What can we say about the climate pledges that countries have submitted so far? The Climate Action Tracker, produced by four research orgsanisations in Europe, has rated most of the INDCs that have come in so far as 'medium'. This means that if all governments adopted this notion of how much they should do, warming would probably exceed 2°C.

Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia and president of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York calls for climate action by India and China, quoting research by Climate Analytics.

Under its INDC (Intended Nationally Determined Contribution), Canada proposes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% below 2005 levels in 2030. This translates to a 21% reduction below 2005 emissions levels excluding forestry, or 2% below 1990 levels.

On 15 May 2015, Canada submitted its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), communicating its economy-wide target to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30% below 2005 levels in 2030. After accounting for forestry we estimate this is a reduction of 21% below 2005 levels of industrial GHG emissions [1]. This is equivalent to a reduction of 2% below 1990 industrial GHG emissions levels.

Climate Analytics' Bill Hare explains the relevance of the SED briefing released recently for Australia and the rest of the world.