Emissions Gap Exists, We Can Close It, says Dr. Elizabeth Sawin and 32 other Scientists

November 24, 2010 by Andrew P. Jones

What’s the latest on the sufficiency of country mitigation pledges to the UN? Now Dr. Beth Sawin of Climate Interactive and 32 other top global scientists have spoken in the UNEP “Emissions Gap Report”. Watch yesterday’s webinar briefing on the work below:

The key conclusions of the study are:

Some background to the work:In mid-2010 the UN Environment Programme, the European Climate Foundation, and the National Institute of Ecology in Mexico convened 33 scientists from 25 different research groups, including Climate Interactive’s Beth Sawin to begin an assessment of the greenhouse gas emissions reductions pledges in the Copenhagen Accord relative to the goals limiting long-term temperature increase to 2.0°C (3.6°F) or 1.5°C (2.7°F).

The approach taken in the assessment involved:

The UNEP website contains additional details including a technical summary with additional modeling detail on the modeling approaches used and the country by country pledge analysis.

You may also be interested in Climate Interactive’s analysis of current pledges, the Climate Scoreboard.

Climate Interactive’s work on this report has been supported by Zennström Philanthropies, the ClimateWorks Foundation, the Foundation for Global Communities, the Morgan Family Foundation, and others. And key partners include MIT Sloan and Ventana Systems, who built C-ROADS with Climate Interactive.