World losing battle against global warming

In the battle to combat global warming, the world isn't moving fast enough to stay in the fight.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — which releases a new report every few years — again gave grim news last week as emissions rose 2.3% to a record in 2013, marking the largest year-to-year change in three decades.

"We're about at a 3" on a scale of 0 to 10 in reducing emissions that cause global warming, said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University geoscientist and contributing author of an international report out earlier this week that warned of "severe, pervasive and irreversible" damage if nations fail to corral greenhouse gases.

Meanwhile, Earth is also on target for its hottest year ever recorded, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as reaching the highest level of atmospheric carbon dioxide in at least 800,000 years. And in the U.S., emissions rose 2.9% in the past year — after several years of declines.

"The pace and scale (of efforts to fight warming) needs to increase dramatically," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute (WRI), a global research organization in Washington, D.C. "It is clear that despite all current efforts, much more action is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."

Perhaps most stunning in this year's IPCC report was scientists' certainty that humans are behind the warming: 95%. Previous reports by the group didn't provide such harsh language to describe future consequences or such high confidence about humanity's role.

The report's conclusions come despite steps by countries all over the globe to reduce emissions. Last month, the 28-nation European Union agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. The move made the EU the first major economy to set post-2020 emissions targets ahead of the global climate pact that's slated to be adopted at a U.N. conference next year in Paris.

The goal of that meeting is that "all the nations of the world, including the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, will be bound by a universal agreement on climate," the French government said in a statement.

That deal will come six years after governments across the globe set a target of keeping the temperature rise below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 compared with before the Industrial Revolution. (Temperatures have gone up about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 19th century.)

Already, the likelihood of reaching that is slipping through the cracks. "The prospects for limiting warming to 3.6 degrees F are becoming vanishingly small," according to a commentary by the Union of Concerned Scientists published earlier this year in the journal Nature: Climate Change.

In its report, the IPCC states the goal would be achievable only if the world cuts greenhouse emissions to near or below zero by 2100, which could be unrealistic given the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.

But that's not stopping nations around the globe from trying. European countries, including Germany, Denmark and Sweden, earn high marks for the percentage of their energy that comes from renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, Morgan said.

Here at home, while the U.S. may be a "latecomer" compared with European efforts to combat global warming, Morgan said its 2013 Climate Action Plan — which aims to cut U.S. carbon pollution, prepare the nation for the impacts of climate change, and lead international efforts to address global climate change — shows significant progress.

However, the recent takeover of the U.S. Senate by Republicans could put U.S. climate policy on shakier ground, because some in the GOP leadership question the science behind global warming. The leading climate denier in the Senate, Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., is likely to head the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which makes decisions on funding climate change research, among other environmental policies.

Even China — the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases — is now the world leader in renewable energy production, according to WRI. The country is also working to cap coal emissions in its smog-choked cities, a move that works to reduce both air pollution and emissions of carbon dioxide.

However, China's continued reliance on coal remains a large problem, said Jake Schmidt, the international program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"Large swathes of China have been frequently blanketed with severe smog, posing a grave threat to public health," he said.

Big businesses — including giants such as General Motors, Apple, Pepsi and Kellogg's — are also getting in on the climate change-fighting action. More than half of the Fortune 100 companies have set goals for their own greenhouse-gas reductions, said Anne Kelly, director of the policy program at Ceres, a Boston-based non-profit sustainability group that mobilizes business leadership on climate-change issues.

On top of that, more than 180 companies have come out in favor of regulating carbon dioxide, a move the Environmental Protection Agency proposed earlier this year.

"In all my years of doing this, I've never seen as much support for an EPA goal," Kelly said.

Such backing may be related to the dire news that's come out on global warming in the past several years, and the cost of doing nothing.

"What's encouraging is that a growing number of companies have already reached the same conclusion as the IPCC and are pressing government leaders, especially in Washington, to move more quickly to tackle this issue," said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres.

"(IPCC's report) conclusively demonstrates that we need to act now on climate change and that failing to do so will be enormously costly for the environment and the global economy."

Contributing: The Associated Press