The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced Monday that greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere continued their “relentless rise” in 2014, suggesting that the fight against climate change will require far more than just the rejection of a pipeline.
Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas, reached a new high last year of 397.7 parts per million, the data showed. The organization also reported that global CO2 averages recorded in the spring of 2015 “crossed the symbolically significant” 400-ppm barrier.
“We will soon be living with globally averaged CO2 levels above 400 parts per million as a permanent reality,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement on the findings.
He added that increasing CO2 levels “means hotter global temperatures, more extreme weather events like heatwaves and floods, melting ice, rising sea levels and increased acidity of the oceans.”
Methane, the most potent greenhouse gas, was also present in the atmosphere at levels of concentration never before seen. The WMO captured atmospheric methane at 1833 parts per billion in 2014, which is 254 percent of pre-industrial levels. The organization noted that 60 percent of methane emissions are from human activity including fossil fuel exploitation, cattle breeding, rice agriculture, and landfills.
“Every year we say that time is running out,” Jarraud said. “We have to act NOW to slash greenhouse gas emissions if we are to have a chance to keep the increase in temperatures to manageable levels.”
President Obama last week rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, citing the need for the US to take the lead in fighting global warming ahead of December’s UN Climate Change Conference in Paris.
The move engendered praise from the environmentalist community, which has often been critical of the administrations deference to fossil fuel interests.
“President Obama is the first world leader to reject a project because of its effect on the climate,” said prominent climate activist Bill McKibbon last week. He added that the decisions gives the president “new stature as an environmental leader, and it eloquently confirms the five years and millions of hours of work that people of every kind put into this fight.”
Despite the White House’s nod to the environment on Keystone, the UN is calling on all world governments to increase their commitment to fighting climate change ahead of next month’s talks in Paris.
The UN Environment Program released its “Emissions Gap” report last week, which revealed that existing policies and agreements will work to limit greenhouse gases, but not at a pace needed to curb warming to below two degrees Celsius by 2100
A two-degree increase is considered by the UN to be the outer limits of safe warming.
Former NASA scientist, James Hansen, however, has called the target a “prescription for disaster,” noting that such an increase would have catastrophic warming effects on the planet.
