Current emissions reduction pledges, therefore, still guarantee disaster.
Soberingly, the 2C guardrail is also in jeopardy, with several analyses showing that nations' emissions reduction pledges are insufficient.
The LAM report shows that Argentina and Colombia are on track to fulfill their unconditional emissions reduction pledges with existing plans to expand non-fossil electricity generation.
The UN Environment Program said that even if nations meet their current emissions reduction pledges, carbon emissions in 2020 will be eight to 12 gigatonnes above the level required to avoid a costly nosedive in greenhouse gas output.
Based on the most conservative predictions for business as usual - even if we meet all our emissions reduction pledges - we are heading for about 3 degree Celsius rise in global average temperatures by that time.
Researchers from the Sustainability Institute, the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Ventana Systems in the US conclude that emissions reduction pledges would allow global mean temperature to increase approximately 3.9C, a level that could see global warming run out of control.
The White House anticipates the talks will help meet an internationally agreed target of keeping global warming below a 2C compared with pre-industrial times, even though current emissions reduction pledges amount to warming of around 2.7C.
They will depend in large measure on whether the Democratic sponsors of the legislation can win 60 votes for a measure that is at the moment unpopular and whether major developing nations, notably China and India, deliver credible emissions reduction pledges of their own.
It isn't just planting forests on their own: Many scientists have suggested that a more advanced strategy may be necessary to keep to a two-degree pathway in the future — particularly now, as analyses increasingly suggest that even the emissions reduction pledges established by countries participating in the Paris climate agreement are still not enough to keep us on track.
Emissions reduction pledges from the European Union, the United States, and China, which account for over half of all global emissions, spurred momentum coming into the talks.
