By Katy Daigle , Simon Jessop and Kate Abnett

A view shows emissions from the chimneys of Yara France plant in Montoir-de-Bretagne near Saint-Nazaire, France, March 4, 2022. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab

BELEM/SAO PAULO, Nov 4 (Reuters) – With a U.N. report warning that worldwide carbon emissions remain too high to halt global warming, Brazil’s president said on Tuesday that this month’s U.N. climate change summit in the Amazon would be a “COP of Truth” and offer real solutions.

Despite three decades of global negotiations, countries will not prevent warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius – the main goal of the Paris Agreement brokered a decade ago. Instead, the world is on track for an extreme 2.3 – 2.5°C of warming, the United Nations‘ Environment Programme said on Tuesday.

The forecast assumes countries will fulfill pledges they have made so far to cut emissions. If they fall short, the world will get even hotter.

“This will be difficult to reverse,” UNEP said of the 1.5C overshoot, noting that countries would need to move even faster and make even bigger reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to prevent runaway climate change.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose country hosts COP30 on November 10-21, said failure to deliver on past climate deals – including the Kyoto Protocol and promised climate finance – was demoralizing for people around the world.

Speaking with reporters at a naval base in Belem, Lula said countries must deliver on past promises, rather than making new ones.

“We don’t want the COP to continue to be an exposition or a fair for ideological climate products, with everyone seeing what they want, how they want it, and no one being obliged to do anything and make things happen,” Lula said.

“We want it to be very serious, and for the things we decide to be implemented,” he said, noting some countries were “not complying” with the Paris treaty committing them to limit warming to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels, working for a limit at 1.5°C.

The U.N. emissions report on Tuesday noted that the current warming trajectory was only 0.3°C lower than it was a year ago before COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan – meaning new plans announced this year have done little to move the needle.

Brazil will propose creating a new U.N.-linked global environment council empowered to travel and monitor progress on climate pledges around the world.

“Because otherwise nothing will happen. A country says ‘I’m not going to comply’ and nothing happens to it,” Lula said. “So the COP loses its momentum, and soon people will no longer want to participate, because it’s pointless.”

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