This body, made up of elected officials and members of civil society, gave its opinion on the reference trajectory for developing France’s climate policies.
France must prepare for global warming of up to +4°C by the end of the century on its European territory. This is the conclusion, made public Thursday, May 4, of the National Council for Ecological Transition (CNTE), a body bringing together civil society and elected officials around environmental issues. In its opinion, the CNTE “proposes to retain, for the trajectory of adaptation to climate change, the general hypothesis of global warming [de la planète] by 3°C by the end of the century, rising to 1.5°C in 2030 and 2°C in 2050″.
France is preparing its third National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC). The previous version (2018-2022) was based on less pessimistic assumptions of an average temperature increase of 2°C compared to the pre-industrial era.
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“We are on a trajectory towards 3°C globally, so for mainland France, that means +4°C”said Ronan Dantec, environmental senator and vice-president of the specialized commission of the CNTE, stressing that the opinion had been adopted “unanimously”. “It says a consensus today of French society in its awareness that we must face the reality of this climate change, and in a lucid way”he added.
A few degrees that make all the difference
Warming, caused mainly by our consumption of coal, oil and gas, is indeed more marked in mainland France compared to the world average. These few degrees may not seem like much, but they are averages, which hide larger one-off increases and an increase in extreme weather events.
According to calculations by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (PDF, page 24)a heat wave that occurred once a decade in a climate without human influence now occurs 2.8 times (at +1°C warming) and would occur 9.4 times in a world at +4° vs.
The objectives of the Paris agreement threatened
The opinion follows the recommendations of the Minister for Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, who has been calling for a few months to get out of the “denial” and to prepare France for a possible warming of 4°C. “Not that this means that we give up on climate ambitions. We must act as if everything depended on us, but we must adapt by measuring that everything does not depend on us”he judged on Thursday.
The policies currently in place around the world suggest a rise in global temperatures of 2.8°C by the end of the century, the UN estimated last October. The implementation of the current commitments made by the different States to reduce their emissions will only reduce this rise to 2.4-2.6°C increase by this timeframe. The world is thus far from the objective of the Paris agreement, which is to limit global warming to well below 2°C, and preferably to 1.5°C.