For the first time, the United Nations acknowledges that keeping global warming below 1.5 °C is no longer achievable. The new report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) shifts the question: no longer how to avoid overshoot, but how far and for how long the planet will exceed the limit.
The UN measures temperature as a multi-decade average, so by that standard the threshold has not yet been crossed. But temperatures have stayed stubbornly high even after very hot years, and the current, unusually strong El Niño makes overshoot almost certain. UNEP's wording is blunt: «Decades of insufficient climate action makes exceedance of 1.5 °C unavoidable.»
The Paris Agreement asked countries to set emissions targets and tighten them over time, reviewed through so-called stocktakes. Many governments have not translated those pledges into policy, and the US withdrawal under the Trump administration has widened the gap. According to UNEP, existing policies would leave warming around 2.8 °C by century's end; even the Paris stretch goals would shave off only 0.2 degrees. Including all national net-zero pledges brings the estimate to 2.1 °C, and warming would keep rising afterwards. Emissions were essentially flat between 2024 and 2025.
UNEP's recovery scenario aims to bring temperatures back below 1.5 °C by 2100, with a 66% chance of staying under 1.8 °C. It requires removing 320 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by century's end, a technology still in its infancy, and rapid cuts: coal power down 75% by 2035 and phased out by 2040, with overall emissions falling 70% by 2040.
Current pledges would cut emissions by only about 12% by 2035, leaving roughly 16 gigatonnes more CO2 than the scenario allows. Solar and wind are growing, but rising electricity demand is outpacing them. The report argues the damage can still be limited, but only if many countries deliver the efforts they have so far avoided.
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