‘At the current rate of CO2 emission, the 1.5°C target would be reached between 10 to 30 years from now’

The IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, to give it its official title, is particularly noteworthy because it was in response to a specific request from the parties to the Paris agreement. For the first time in the Paris agreement the limit of 1.5°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels was mentioned as a goal that countries should strive to achieve. Hence a special report from the IPCC was called for. It would also examine the differences between mitigation and adaptation for a 1.5°C and 2°C target for limiting global temperature rise, while keeping the goal of sustainable development.

The report makes it clear that the difficulty of reaching the 2°C target is less steep compared to achieving the 1.5°C target. At the current rate of emissions, of about 42 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, the cumulative emissions permitted for the 1.5°C target would be reached very quickly – between 10 to 30 years from now. For the first time, the report introduces a widespread role for negative emissions arising especially through methods of removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. Some of these methods have been field tested on a limited scale, but by and large the scale on which they are required for a 1.5°C limit is very difficult, some would say impossible, to achieve.