First published by Sky News.
The US climate envoy John Kerry told Sky News that the problem is "extremely urgent" and that "countries are simply not getting the job done".
Photo: Sky News
It comes as the US and China agreed to co-operate on the climate crisis following two days of talks in Shanghai.
The former US secretary of state said: "It's extremely urgent, the word urgent is totally applicable to the current crisis that we are in because countries are simply not getting the job done.
“Even if we did everything that we set out to do in the Paris Agreement the Earth's temperature is going to increase a very significant amount, perhaps as much as 3.7C or more.”
"What we said we would do in Paris it's actually heading towards 4C or more - that's beyond catastrophic in the consequences in the food production, in water, in habitability in various parts of the planet, the melting of ice, the sea level rise, the warming."
The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty, adopted by 197 countries at a summit in the French capital, which has a goal of limiting global warming to well below 2C, and preferably 1.5C, compared to pre-industrial levels.
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