Government pledges due in 2015 to cut rising world greenhouse gases will be too weak to avert the worst of global warming will and merely be part of a process toward agreeing on far tougher curbs, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said at 190-nation talks in Lima on limiting warming that it is unrealistic to expect a miracle solution at a U.N. summit in Paris a year from now.
Governments agreed in 2010 to a long-term goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times to avert the worst of heat waves, floods, desertification and rising sea levels.