Wealthy nations on track to extract twice as much fossil fuels as allowed to limit climate change

The world's nations have pledged to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels, which involves shutting down fossil fuel extraction as quickly as possible. But despite this promise, first reached six years ago during the Paris Climate Accords, the fossil-fuel-producing nations are on track to extract more than twice as much coal, oil and natural gas as would be permissible under this plan, a new United Nations report warns. 

The so-called production gap — the difference between countries' climate pledges and their fossil-fuel production plans — hasn't budged since the UN first examined it in 2019, indicating that international climate accords are still closer to theoretical promises than concrete plans. 

"Collectively, although many governments have pledged to lower their emissions and even set net-zero targets, they have not yet made plans to wind down production of the fossil fuels that, once burned, generate most of those emissions," the report found.