The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has acknowledged for the first time that the goal of keeping global warming below 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels is no longer viable. Best-case projections now point to an overshoot of around 1.8° C, paired with large-scale carbon removal.
When nearly every country signed the 2015 Paris Agreement, the 1.5° C target was its central aim. Since then, most of the world has treated it largely as aspirational, and the United States, one of the largest emitters, has withdrawn from the agreement and later recommitted to it. Depending on the baseline and temperature record used, the planet has either come very close to the limit or already passed it. The current El Niño, which appears unusually strong, makes overshooting it likely under any record.
UNEP's new report reframes the goal. Instead of simply staying under 1.5° C, the focus is now on how long the world exceeds that limit and by how much. The agency states that "decades of insufficient climate action makes exceedance of 1.5° C unavoidable," adding that whether the overshoot is temporary "crucially depends on decisions taken today." Meeting even that revised goal would require dramatic emissions cuts now and the removal of hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere before the century ends.
The outlook is grim. UNEP estimates that existing policies would push warming to about 2.8° C by 2100, and that even the Paris Agreement's stretch goals would reduce this by only 0.2° C. Including all net-zero pledges made outside the Paris framework would still leave warming near 2.1° C. Emissions were largely flat between 2024 and 2025, and fossil fuel emissions actually rose, offset by better land-use management. To make meaningful progress, emissions would need to be falling already.
Source: Ars Technica · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing