The New York Times reports:

Seven years after the Paris Agreement, in which leaders pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, the world is still not on track to meet those goals.

New data published by Climate Action Tracker, an independent research group, ahead of this week’s United Nations climate summit reveals the gap.

None of the world’s biggest emitters — China, the United States, the European Union and India — have reduced their emissions enough to meet the Paris Agreement goals. Together, the three countries and the European bloc account for more than half of historical emissions of planet-warming gases, which include carbon dioxide and methane. The United States is the largest historical emitter, and China is the largest current emitter. Their policies have an outsize impact on the future of Earth’s climate.

The outlook for how much the world is expected to warm has improved as governments have adopted policies to reduce emissions and renewable energy has grown worldwide. But it hasn’t been enough to steer the world toward the future envisioned by the Paris Agreement in 2015, which sought to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius and make a good-faith effort to stay at 1.5 degrees. [Continue reading…]