With the passing of the Copenhagen Accord's 31 January deadline for its supporters to submit their pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the absence of strengthened commitments has failed to meet the Accord's stated objective of taking action to limit global warming to under 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), a critical threshold for avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.
The 31 January deadline was the most immediate ‘action point’ in the non-binding Accord drawn up during last December's UN Copenhagen climate summit. It proved to have no impact on influencing major emitting nations to improve upon emission reduction commitments they had already made prior to the summit.
