Aspirations not commitments

In a 2015 article (updated this year),i the BBC lists what it describes as a series of ‘commitments’ contained in the Paris Agreement.ii The first is: ‘to “pursue efforts” to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C, and to keep them “well below” 2.0C above those recorded in pre-industrial times…’ But the Paris Agreement contains no such commitment. The temperature targets are found in the Agreement’s Article 2.1 (a) which is introduced by this: ‘This Agreement … aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change … by’ . An ‘aim’ is not a commitment.

In other words, although widely described as commitments, the 1.5ºC and ‘well below’ 2.0ºC targets are, in the Agreement itself, no more than aspirations.iii

But they’re important

Nonetheless the temperature goals have assumed considerable importance in climate policy and legal reasoning. Examples of how this has happened can be found in the Dutch Supreme Court’s 2019 judgment in Urgenda v Netherlandsivand in the German Constitutional Court’s 2021 ruling.v As a result of these and similar judicial decisions, the temperature targets have effectively been treated as benchmarks for legal obligations, at least in parts of Western Europe. Yet these obligations are not based on the Paris Agreement’s text.

Even so, the targets and their perceived consequences continue to have considerable impact on climate change discourse and commentary. For example, in 2023 the World Economic Forum stated that ‘The 1.5-degree Celsius threshold is considered a critical threshold, as it is the point at which the impacts of climate change are expected to become increasingly severe.’ vi Therefore it’s important to consider whether, although the Paris Agreement does not provide legal authority, they are nonetheless based on rigorous scientific research.

Where did they originate?

The 2.0ºC target first appeared in academic discussions in the 1970s and later gained political traction when the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) promoted 2.0°C as a ‘guardrail’ vii and when the EU adopted it in 1996 as a policy objective.viii But these were value judgements rather than scientifically based findings.

The origin of the 1.5ºC target was very different. It emerged largely as a result of advocacy by in particular small island states (AOSIS) which claimed that exceeding 2.0ºC would for them mean existential damage. In other words, its origin was moral and political rather than scientific. ix

Therefore, rather than being based on rigorous science, both targets are essentially policy guardrails – arguably at least not much more than mission statements or political slogans.

Are they achievable?

However, whatever their origins, the targets have since become central to climate policy and modelling — particularly following the IPCC’s 2018 Special Report on 1.5°C.x And it’s therefore useful to refer back to that report today as, although some doubts are developing about the prospects for the Paris Agreement’s 1.5ºC target xi, it’s now increasingly clear, although often overlooked, that in reality there’s no realistic prospect of humanity keeping global temperatures below that level – or even below the seemingly rather easier target of ‘well below’ 2ºC. Here’s why:

The 1.5ºC target

In paragraph C1 of its special report the IPCC recommended that, to achieve the Paris Agreement’s 1.5ºC target, global CO2 emissions should ‘decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030’. As global emissions in 2010 were 34.0 gigatonnes (Gt)xii they would therefore have to come down to about 18.7 Gt by 2030 to meet the target. But, just three countries (China, the US and India) already exceed that (by 2.2 Gt) and, taken together, are likely to increase (or at best stabilise) their emissions over the next four years. Moreover another 194 countries, together with shipping and aviation, are the source of about 20 Gt of CO2 and, unless established trends are reversed, it’s very likely that figure will either be unchanged or will have increased by 2030.

Therefore global emissions will probably be far above 18.7 Gt and, if the IPCC got it right, warming of much more than 1.5ºC target is overwhelmingly likely.

The ‘well below’ 2ºC target

The Paris Agreement’s ‘well below’ 2ºC target faces the same problem. In paragraph C1 of its special report the IPCC recommended that, to limit ‘global warming to below 2°C’, global CO2 emissions should ‘decline by about 25% from 2010 levels by 2030’. Therefore, as 2010 global emissions were 34.0 Gigatonnes (Gt), they’d have to come down to about 25.5 Gt by 2030 for emissions to get ‘below’ 2ºC – say 24.5 Gt for ‘well below’ 2ºC as specified by the Paris Agreement’s Article 2.1(a). But just 7 countries (China, the USA, India, Russia, Iran, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia) already account for over 24.5 Gt and these are countries that, taken together, are likely to increase (or at best stabilise) their emissions over the next four years. Moreover another 190 countries, together with shipping and aviation, are the source of about 17 Gt of CO2 and, unless established trends are reversed, it’s very likely that figure will either be unchanged or will have increased by 2030.

Therefore global emissions will probably be far above 24.5 Gt and, if the IPCC got it right, warming of much more than 2ºC is overwhelmingly likely.

Conclusion

The Paris Agreement’s temperature aspirations, although based on neither legal obligation nor rigorous science, have assumed significant importance and as such have a major impact on climate discourse. Yet it’s now clear that, despite their political importance, there’s no realistic prospect of humanity complying with the Agreement’s principal aim of ‘holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels’.

Endnotes

i BBC News, ‘What is the Paris Agreement’, updated 2025: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93d59d4zy1o

ii https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/english_paris_agreement.pdf

iii Even these aspirations are hedged about with uncertainties and qualifications. For example, the terms ‘’pre-industrial’ and ‘well below’ are not defined and Article 2.1‘s ‘aim’ is qualified by ‘sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty’ and by the provisions of items 2.1(b) and (c) and 2.2. Moreover, Article 4.4 in effect exempts developing countries (about 150 of the 197 parties to the Agreement) from any obligation to reduce their emissions.

iv https://www.climatecasechart.com/document/urgenda-foundation-v-state-of-the-netherlands_3297

v https://www.climatecasechart.com/documents/neubauer-et-al-v-germany-order_7977 and see https://gpil.jura.uni-bonn.de/2021/05/the-federal-constitutional-courts-climate-change-order-and-the-interplay-between-international-and-domestic-climate-protection-law/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

vi https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/09/prevent-1-5-degrees-celsius-climate-threshold/

vii German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), 1995: https://www.wbgu.de/en/publications/publication/szenario-zur-ableitung-globaler-co2-reduktionsziele-und-umsetzungsstrategien

viii See https://archive.unfccc.int/european-council-conclusions-community-strategy-on-climate-change-european-union-19960701

ix Their clever slogan ‘1.5 to stay alive’ has had considerable impact: https://www.sprep.org/news/15-to-stay-alive-for-pacific-countries-is-non-negotiable

x https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/

xi See for example https://sustainabilityonline.net/explainer/uncertainty-around-the-1-5c-climate-target-makes-it-more-important-than-ever/

xii https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025?vis=co2tot#emissions_table

24 Comments

  1. Thank you Robin,

    Facts are important, and it’s always useful to remind ourselves of the background to the current situation, and to correct misleading BBC reporting (regarding commitments that aren’t actually commitments).

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  2. Thanks Robin.

    You are quite right; there isn’t a great deal of scientific rigour behind the development of the limits. They are essentially a political gesture providing a focus for climate change mitigation efforts. But just as they have been retrospectively endowed with a legislative power that they do not possess, they have also been retrospectively endowed with the veneer of a scientific rigour that has actually always been absent. I attempted to explain how and why this happens here:

    https://cliscep.com/2023/12/16/the-limitations-of-limits/

    Essentially, it is a question of working out what would be a good answer and then providing an after-the-fact rationale. Furthermore, it is probably also worth pointing out how the guy behind most of this (Schellnhuber, a prominent member of the Club of Rome) is actually quite prepared to turn his back on scientific consensus to support fringe views whenever it suits him. This attitude was revealed in a forward he once wrote for an Australian think tank’s climate porn report:

    https://cliscep.com/2024/08/25/what-lies-beneath/

    It is very frustrating that the world should be so convinced that there is a ‘solid’ scientific basis for what is essentially a load of anti-science hand-wavy speculation used to justify the precautionary principle.

    Finally, for what it is worth, I make plain my lack of regard for Schellnhuber’s grasp of basic risk theory here:

    https://cliscep.com/2022/07/20/interview-with-an-icon/

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  3. P.S. You will note in the first of my articles that I fail to mention the role played by the ASOS. My bad.

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  4. Thank you for this John, there’s some powerful and interesting material in both your linked posts. However, I think it’s worth noting (again) that essentially these considerations arise only in Western Europe. Most of the world seems not to have been convinced by any of this and is content, for practical purposes, to ignore the so-called targets altogether.

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  5. Noting John’s comment above (“You are quite right; there isn’t a great deal of scientific rigour behind the development of the limits. They are essentially a political gesture providing a focus for climate change mitigation efforts. But just as they have been retrospectively endowed with a legislative power that they do not possess, they have also been retrospectively endowed with the veneer of a scientific rigour that has actually always been absent.“), here’s an example of a judicial review of a wind farm planning approval failing, and making that point rather well in the process:

    https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/media/mm1m0bkf/2026csoh24-petition-of-galloway-without-pylons-for-judicial-review.pdf

    OPINION OF LORD LAKE In Petition of GALLOWAY WITHOUT PYLONS, Outer House, Court of Session, 10th March 2026.

    In my opinion, paragraphs 12 & 13 of the judgment (which may be legally correct) reveal a worrying trend, especially on the part of politicians (with Judges not prepared to look behind it) to accept, without evidence, that there is a “climate emergency”, and that this trumps the “nature crisis”:

    [12] In paragraph 113, the Scottish Ministers state when weighing the development against the development plan, the greatest weight should be given to the global climate emergency. They recognise the adverse environmental impact arising from the loss of woodland but state: “the twin climate and nature crises are in Scottish Ministers’ view best served by securing mitigation of the overall impacts on biodiversity and emissions by imposition of conditions to secure native and other woodland replanting and delivery of a green networks scheme, and significantly reducing carbon emissions, by providing considerable additional network capacity for renewable energy.” (Paragraph 113) This indicates that the two considerations noted are not entirely inconsistent. [my emphasis].

    [13] These passages provide the basis for the conclusion that the greatest weight should be attached to the need for the development and why, in the Scottish Ministers’ view, it was not appropriate to reduce the weight accorded to that factor. Although they are not expressly “carried forward” to the part of the decision drawing matters together, it is always a requirement to read the decision as a whole and these earlier passages must be taken into account. The result is that if it is necessary or appropriate to go behind the ministers’ decision to take a view of the weight to be attached to competing considerations, the decision leaves no substantial doubt as to how it was taken.

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  6. Where’s a mention of the elephant in the room, global Marxism and the U.N. IPCC global Marxist politician-run octopus? Not only the 1.5C and 2.0C numbers but the concept of global avg. surface temperature (GAT) are fictions created for the purpose of pushing degrowth depop. policies to undermine Big Oil, pillar of capitalism with the hope of foisting global Marxism in the chaos. It’s pure propaganda, not science. The GAT values are collected, computed, and announced by a global Marxist central committee for purely political reasons, and have no relation to reality, only ammo for their political extortion program. If there were no global Marxism nobody would notice any global climate change or worry about Big Oil being an existential threat. Rather, it’s global Marxism that’s the existential threat, so quit playing along with them and fight them.

    If the northern half of the globe had a surface temperature of +15C and the southern half had a surface temperature of -15C, what is the global avg. surface temperature GAT? Answer: NONE. GAT doesn’t exist. There would just be two regions of the globe with different temperatures. Ditto if you divide the globe into a million pieces. Averages of averages yield mathematical garbage unless strict rules are observed, which the IPCC never does.

    http://www.historyscoper.com/whatistheuseofglobaltemperature.html

    http://www.historyscoper.com/thereisnogreenhouseeffect.html

    http://www.historyscoper.com/whatisthedifference.html

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  7. Conspiracy theories like “it’s the global Marxists” or “it’s the worldwide Jews” have long been poor and dangerous substitutes for thoughtful consideration of the many marketing, psychological, political, scientific, and social shaping of beliefs and viewpoints.

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  8. The Edgar 2026 data were published today (see the link below). A quick review suggests there’s little of note to report, but I used it to update the ‘well below 2ºC’ part of the subject essay. Here’s the result:

    The ‘well below’ 2ºC target

    In its 2018 Special Report (para C1) the IPCC recommended that, to limit ‘global warming to below 2°C’, global CO2 emissions should ‘decline by about 25% from 2010 levels by 2030’. Therefore, as 2010 global emissions were 34.0 Gigatonnes (Gt) (see the third reference below), they’d have to come down to about 25.5 Gt by 2030 for emissions to get ‘below’ 2ºC – to say about 24.5 Gt for ‘well below’ 2ºC as specified by the Paris Agreement’s Article 2.1(a). But just 6 countries (China, the USA, India, Russia, Japan and Iran) already account for over 24.5 Gt and these countries, taken together, are likely to do little better than stabilise their emissions over the next four years. Moreover another 191 countries, together with shipping and aviation, are the source of about 15.5 Gt of CO2 emissions and, unless established trends are reversed, it’s likely that figure will be unchanged 2030. Therefore global emissions will almost certainly be well above 25.0 Gt by 2030 and, if the IPCC got it right, warming of much more than 2ºC is therefore very likely.

    References:

    Click to access english_paris_agreement.pdf

    https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/

    https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2026?vis=co2tot#emissions_table

    Of course it would have been easier to have said that, to meet the 2030 2ºC target, global emissions would have to cut by 39%. But I think that focusing on emissions and specific countries is a far more powerful way of making the point. Do others agree?

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  9. Robin,

    I think that what’s particularly telling is that while the UK’s GHG emissions are shown as having diminished rapidly in earlier years, the low-hanging fruit has all been picked, and now it’s obviously getting very difficult. We’re still at 0.73% of global CO2 emissions (0.69% of GHG emissions), and the UK reduction in both CO2 and total GHG emissions between 2024 and 2025 is extremely slight (less than 1% in each case). At this rate we stand absolutely no chance of achieving net zero by 2050.

    I note also that global GHG emissions are continuing to rise, as are China’s (albeit China’s CO2 emissions are shown as declining slightly).

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  10. Our friends at The Conversation published an article yesterday that provided me with the perfect opportunity to make use of the updated 2ºC part of my essay. The article and my comment can be found HERE.

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  11. Professor Galbraith, the author of The Conversation article to which I refer above, hasn’t yet responded. In the meantime, I’ve raised another – and very different – topic with him.

    Note: apart from me no-one has commented. Anyone here like to join in?

    Liked by 1 person

  12. Robin, I’ll keep my powder dry for now, and will wait to see what, if anything, develops.

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  13. Well Mark, something has developed: Galbraith has replied to both my questions. So we have a rare opportunity to engage with a prominent academic on two critical issues and to do so in the view of the many activists who look at The Conversation.

    Let’s not waste it.

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  14. Robin, comment posted – thus:

    Professor Galbraith,

    Your optimism is encouraging, but is it realistic? Looking at the latest update to the EDGAR database, most countries increased their greenhouse gas emissions (in absolute terms) in 2025. Yes, the trend is slowing (with global volumes increasing by just 0.7% year on year), but we are still going the wrong way, rather than reversing trends in the unprecedented way that you acknowledge is necessary.

    The EU 27 (generating 5.78% of global GHGs), reduced year on year emissions by just 0.24% (and some EU countries (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Finland, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain) actually increased their year-on-year emissions). The UK’s reduction was just under 1%, but this seems to be achieved in significant part by exporting emissions (consumption emissions aren’t declining in the UK at anything like that rate).

    Australia’s reduction was 1.2%. Brazil’s was 0.865%. India’s was just 0.15% (and its increased reliance on coal might suggest that even this modest reduction will now be going into reverse). Japan’s reduction was 1.44%. Russia’s reduction (does this take into account the emissions arising from its war on Ukraine?) was just 0.13%.

    No other major emitter of GHGs (by which I mean emitters of 1% or more of the global total) reduced them at all in 2025. In fact Canada (responsible for 1.41% of global emissions) increased their emissions by almost 2%. China (responsible for 29.51%) increased emissions by 0.06%. Indonesia (responsible for 2.51%) increased its emissions by almost 1.2%. International aviation (responsible for 1.17%) increased its emissions by more than 5%. International shipping (responsible for 1.39%) increased its emissions by almost 2%. Iran (responsible for 2.07%) increased its emissions by 1.71%. Mexico (responsible for 1.32%) increased its emissions by 0.78%. Pakistan (responsible for 0.98%) increased its emissions by 2.4%. Saudi Arabia (responsible for 1.56%) increased its emissions by 1.27%. South Korea (responsible for 1.29%) increased its emissions by 0.46%. Turkiye (responsible for 1.13%) increased its emissions by 4.15%. USA (responsible for 11.11%) increased its emissions by 2.23%. Vietnam (responsible for 1.01%) increased its emissions by 2.75%.

    In short, many more large emitters are increasing their emissions than are reducing them.

    Is it not time to accept reality and (whilst not giving up on emissions reduction) to concentrate on adaptation instead?

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  15. Robin & Mark – just read that The Conversation article & comments.

    Professor Galbraith latest reply to Robin asking – “I’d be most interested to know what you mean by ‘a new energy system” is informative. He replies with a handwave –

    “Yes, I do mean a renewable system. As long as we want to have a technosphere – including things like buildings, transportation, food production and information technologies – we need energy to build and run it.

    Some parts of this system are difficult to decarbonize. But most of it can be run on renewables. And there are a lot of clever people around the world working hard to come up with ways to improve the renewable energy system, and for how to decarbonize the more difficult sectors.”

    At least he responded to comments, so good on him.

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  16. Professor Galbraith is a rare and pleasant exception at The Conversation. He has promptly responded to my comment and to Robin’s several comments. What bothers me is that his replies (with all due respect to him) don’t really address the issues we have raised under his article. They are, IMO, the sort of airy fairy optimism about our ability to reduce emissions (despite the glaring evidence of global failure to do so), combined with great worry about the effects of climate change, that I expect to see from pink-haired “green” activist teenagers. I hoped for deeper, more insightful and more realistic responses. But I suppose a polite and prompt response is better than nothing.

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  17. Mark, I agree that Galbraith’s prompt responses are welcome. And they’re also interesting in that they reveal his unimpressive grasp of the issues – which may, I suspect, be true of much of academia. As you indicate, he seems to inhabit an optimistic dreamworld where the huge and forbidding obstacles to urgent emission reduction will be overcome by the efforts of ‘a lot of clever people around the world‘, ignoring the international political dimension and the practical reality that it’s almost always best to assume that technological change will not come to the rescue.

    If the thread stays open (always a concern with TC), I plan to see if I can manoeuvre him into a position where he may find it hard to avoid reality.

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  20. Great comments on that thread by both of you, Professor Galbraith has no real answers, he just repeats the same mantra – “There are lots of great people working hard at this, and they can always use more support”. Wonder who funds his tenure. But he at least is willing to respond in comments, so you never know, a few hard facts may make him reconsider his position.

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  21. Professor Galbraith’s latest reply to Robin:

    Perhaps.

    But I think the important thing is that we simply try our best to reverse the historical trends, and get fossil fuel use to zero as quickly as we can. There are lots of great people working hard at this, and they can always use more support.

    Perhaps. But where’s the facing up to reality? We have to live in the real world, and facts matter. And the fact is that most of the big emitters are continuing to increase their emissions. What do we – realistically – do about that? I do expect more and better from a University Professor.

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  22. And my reply to Professor Galbraith:

    Unfortunately the ‘we’ that you say has to try its best includes the governments of countries such as China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Iran and Saudi Arabis (all huge emitters) that, over the years, have made it plain that getting fossil fuel to zero is not a priority – far from it.

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  24. Yes, Robin, it was good that an author at The Conversation was prepared to engage so wholeheartedly with commenters. That made a pleasant change.

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