Weather Bee: What is at stake in Baku? ByAbhishek Jha Nov 22, 2024 07:06 PM IST Share Via Copy Link While all COPs have the mandate to mitigate the climate crisis, the ongoing one is being termed as the ‘finance COP’. The 29th Conference of the Parties (COP), a meeting of the governments that adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, is set to conclude in Baku on November 22. While all COPs have the mandate to mitigate the climate crisis, the ongoing one is being termed as the “finance COP” because the existing funding arrangement of developed countries paying developing ones to fund climate crisis mitigation and adaptation plans expires in 2025. What exactly is at stake in Baku? Here are five charts that explain this in detail. PREMIUM The venue of the United Nations climate change conference ‘COP29’ in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Reuters Photo) The planet has already seen a year of 1.5°C warmingAn important goal of the Paris Agreement in 2015 was to limit global warming (relative to the pre-industrial average) under 1.5°C. While this goal is for long-term warming, earth’s temperature has already taken the first step towards that. Of the five prominent global temperature datasets analysed by HT, the 12-month running average has already breached the 1.5°C threshold in all (at different points starting December 2023) but the one published by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), which even generally shows a lower level of warming. This is a clear proof of the fact that the world has, so far, failed to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. [embedded content] And business as usual might make a long-term breach also a foregone conclusionTo be sure, long-term changes in global temperature are taken as the average change in at least a decade. Therefore, the breach of 1.5°C threshold long-term might appear distant. However, it is inevitable under the current trajectory of fossil fuel emissions. The science of managing global warming works on the idea that annual carbon emissions must peak at a certain level and then come down if the earth’s temperature is to be kept from breaching a certain level compared to pre-industrial levels. According to estimates by the Global Carbon Project, the stock of carbon in the atmosphere will breach levels concomitant with 1.5°C warming in the next six years if we emit at the rate estimated for 2024, and that for 2°C warming in the next 27 years. Estimates for 2024 published by Global Carbon Project earlier this month show that global annual emissions have not yet peaked. This means that the world is nowhere near the second order problem of bringing down emissions. [embedded content] Who needs to do what to bring down current emissions?Estimates suggest that China’s carbon emissions in 2024 were more than the share of major European countries (EU27), US and India. This cohort of four actually acc
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