Unambitious targets

Ahead of the 28th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held in Dubai, the United Nations Environment Programme released its Emissions Gap Report. This COP is supposed to be an occasion for a “global stocktake”, noting how far the world is progressing towards meeting the goals set out under the Paris Agreement of 2015. But the “stocktake” itself will be largely representative of documents drafted by consensus — it will not take a strong position, in particular, on the ongoing utility of those targets in the first place.