The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has reached a record level and remains high, even despite the slowdown in industrial production associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. And 2020, according to experts, will be one of the hottest years in the history of meteorological observations. This is reminded by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) ahead of the virtual climate summit, which will be held on Saturday, December 12.
The Summit, organized by the United Nations, the United Kingdom and France with the support of Chile and Italy, will focus on the Paris Climate Agreement and, accordingly, the measures to combat global warming - those that countries have already adopted and those that have yet to be adopted ...
Recall that in recent months, several countries, including the UK, EU countries, Japan, South Korea and China, have committed themselves to achieving "carbon neutral" or "zero" emissions in the coming decades. These terms, the UN emphasizes, mean that the amount of carbon dioxide emissions does not exceed the amount absorbed by oceans and forests.
Countries adopted the Paris Climate Agreement five years ago at a summit held on the sidelines of the 70th session of the UN General Assembly in New York. The main task that states have set themselves under this international treaty is to ensure that the average global temperature does not exceed the pre-industrial level by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Otherwise, the process of global warming will become irreversible and entail catastrophic consequences for life on Earth.
As emphasized in the UN, in order to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement, countries must make more efforts. Five years since the signing of this agreement, experts say, have become the hottest in the history of observations. Temperatures in the Arctic are breaking new records, and the northern regions of Russia, even beyond the Arctic Circle, are engulfed in wildfires of an unprecedented scale.
“The Paris Agreement was a critical step in the fight against climate change. However, not enough is being done to implement it, ”says a WMO press release.
