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Long-term climate policy targets and implications for 2030

Countries, worldwide, have agreed that international efforts should be aimed at keeping the global mean temperature increase below 2 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels. In order to achieve the 2 °C climate target with a likely probability (>67%), cumulative global CO2 emissions over in the 2010–2100 period need to be constrained to about 1000 GtCO2. An assessment of current policies shows that these lead to emissions that are much higher than those of the least-cost mitigation scenarios consistent with a likely chance of achieving the 2 °C target.