38 per cent increase in annual global carbon dioxide emissions between 1990 and 2009

Despite the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, annual global carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combustion grew by about 38 per cent between 1990 and 2009, with the rate of growth faster after 2000 than in the 1990s. Even with aggressive action to reduce emissions, the world would still face challenges to limit global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times.

In reality, the world cannot yet be said to be taking aggressive action on climate change. The global carbon dioxide level reached 389 parts per million in 2010 and, absent significant shifts in policy, is on track to exceed 450 parts per million over the coming decades. In its 2010 Emissions Gap Report, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) concluded that the currently forecast 2020 emission levels were consistent with pathways that would lead to a likely temperature increase of between 2.5 and 5 degrees Celsius by the end of the twenty-first century, putting millions of lives at risk from increased malnutrition, disease or injury in heatwaves and weather-related disasters, and changes in the geographic range of some infectious disease vectors.