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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.

Interactive map: Australia has set a target to reduce its carbon emissions by at least 26 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030. See how Australia's emissions and its new reduction target compare among the world's top 15 emitters.Sources: Climate Institute, Climate Action Tracker, Climate Change Authority, Global Carbon Atlas

President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce carbon pollution -- acclaimed by supporters, reviled by opponents -- won’t be enough to save the planet. The latest and toughest version of Obama’s Clean Power Plan and measures already announced by other world leaders aren’t sufficient to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius this century. “The change is too small in comparison to global emissions,” Fekete said by telephone. “There are also many other countries driving this.” Yet Fekete isn’t despairing. Her organization is one of four European research centers that run Climate Action Tracker, which studies global-warming policies, including Obama’s power-plant rules, as well as pledges by Europe, China, Russia and others.

President Obama announced on Monday, 3 August 2015, the final version of the clean power plan that is to reduce emissions from power plants significantly. While it is an update of the plan already announced in 2014, it still has a significant effect. The CAT can now put the US CPP into part of its “current policies” scenario, which calculates emissions from policies in place, rather than planned or pledged.

President Barack Obama's plan to slash electricity-generated CO2 emissions was welcomed today as a courageous step towards a lower-carbon future, but not yet enough to brake dangerous planet warming. "This is definitely a step change... from what has been happening so far in the power sector in the US," climate policy analyst Niklas Hoehne of the New Climate Institute, a research body, told AFP. A measure dubbed the Climate Action Tracker, to which Hoehne contributes, says the US target has "medium" ambition -- as did those of the other top three emitters: the EU and China.

The next few years are unprecedented in human history. We know with unusually high scientific certainty that the near-term choices we as a nation and a species make about carbon pollution will determine whether or not we will destroy our livable climate in the coming decades — thereby ruining the lives of billions of people irreversibly for centuries to come.

The government’s new carbon agenda announced last month with a higher reduction goal has drawn heavy protests from the corporate sector as well as opposition from environmentalists. Under the plan, Seoul will work to reduce 37 percent of estimated greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 - an increase from earlier proposals that included cuts between 14.7 and 31.3 percent. The Climate Action Tracker ranks Korea’s climate action plan “inadequate” in its contribution to the universal ultimate goal of containing global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).