UN warns 1.5°C limit will be breached, urges rapid emissions cuts

The United Nations Environment Programme says that exceeding the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C warming limit is now unavoidable, after years of inadequate climate action. It argues that the choices made now will determine whether the overshoot is temporary and how far temperatures rise, making rapid emissions cuts and carbon removal increasingly important.

Current government policies could lead to about 2.8°C of warming by the end of the century; meeting countries’ Paris targets would lower that estimate by only 0.2°C. Including wider net-zero pledges brings the projection to 2.1°C, while global emissions were roughly flat from 2024 to 2025 and fossil-fuel emissions rose. The article says UNEP’s best-case outlook involves warming overshooting to 1.8°C, followed by removing hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide before the century ends.