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As the United Nations climate summit nears its halfway point, the Biden administration on Friday tried to strike a balance between praising the new promises countries made this week to cut emissions and warning that they still need to do much more to avert the worst impacts. of global warming.

“Let me emphasize as strongly as I can: The work has not been done,” John Kerry, President Biden’s special envoy on climate change, said at a press conference in Glasgow on Friday. “We all need to push our forward ambition. But it can be done if we follow it.”

In the first week of the climate summit, there was a flurry of new climate promises. India Promised to achieve net zero emissions by 2070This is the first time he has set such a goal. At least 105 countries signed an agreement reduce emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, by 30 percent this decade. Large financial institutions financing the transition to clean energy.

At least on paper, these promises seem important. International Energy Agency published an analysis He suggested Thursday that the world could potentially limit global warming to 1.8 degrees Celsius, or 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit, of pre-industrial levels by 2100, if nations follow the latest climate commitments and long-term plans.

That would be well behind holding warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above the threshold that many scientists say is planetary. will experience catastrophic effects from heat waves, drought, forest fires and flooding. (The planet has already warmed by 1.1 degrees.) However, this would bring Earth much closer to that goal than before.

Still, the agency’s analysis comes with major caveats. It assumes that dozens of countries, including China, Brazil, Australia and Saudi Arabia, will deliver on their promises to reach net zero emissions by the middle of the century. Most of these countries still haven’t put in place concrete policies or even detailed plans to cut emissions sharply this decade and stay on track to meet these targets.

“Governments make bold promises for the next decades, but short-term action is insufficient,” said Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency.

Mr. Kerry admitted that many of the promises made in Glasgow were still just those promises. “Words don’t make enough sense unless they’re implemented,” he said. “We’ve all seen years of disappointment for promises made but not kept. We understand this. But I believe what’s going on here is far from business as usual.

“The alternative,” he said, “is you say nothing, you do nothing, you have no promises or commitments and you just sit there and wait for the deluge.”

The climate summit was marred by the absence of some major leaders in person, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.

But Mr Kerry said he was continuing to meet with representatives of both countries in Glasgow in hopes of finding “a way forward”.

“Are we going to be able to keep all the countries at the level we need by the end of next week? No. And we know that,” he said.

At a New York Times climate event in Glasgow, Mr. Kerry said on Friday that the stakes on this conference could not be higher. Still, he said he’s hopeful given the technological advances that allow mapping of emissions from companies and countries, including new satellite systems that provide measurements of methane and carbon dioxide emissions.

“This presence, coupled with money, means we have a new level of responsibility,” Mr. Kerry said. “Moreover, there is a reality to many of these programs and promises that we have never seen before.”