Current pledges for curbing carbon emissions will doom the world to global warming of 3.5 C, massively overshooting the UN target of 2 C, researchers reported at the climate talks here on Tuesday.
Output of heat-trapping carbon gases is rising so fast that governments have only four years left to avert a massive extra bill for meeting the two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) target, they said.
"The current pledges are heading towards a global emissions pathway that will take warming to 3.5 C goal (6.3 F)," according to an estimate issued by a consortium of German researchers. The world is on a "high-warming, high-cost, high-risk pathway," they said.
The report, compiled by Climate Analytics and Ecofys, which are German firms that specialise in carbon data, was issued on the sidelines of the 194-nation UN talks in Durban. The 12-day conference runs until Friday.
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