Global pledges to cut planet-heating emissions fall far short of the Paris Agreement targets and will push the world to 2.6°C of warming this century, the UN warned on Wednesday. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report exposes the gap between rhetoric and action on global warming, and the problems facing political leaders in the November COP31 climate summit.
Even if countries fully implement their latest climate pledges, global temperatures might still rise 2.6°C over pre-industrial levels by 2100, says the annual Emissions Gap Report. That would exceed the historic goal set in 2015 in Paris of limiting warming to well below 2°C and striving for a safer 1.5°C.
Decades of inadequate action have “lost” all hope of staying below 1.5°C, the report warned. “The world can no longer avoid a temperature overshoot of the 1.5-degree limit, with consequences that are already devastating,” UN leader Antonio Guterres said in a statement launching the widely anticipated report. Deadly floods, harsh heatwaves, roaring wildfires, lost lives, devastated economies, rising inequities. And the least responsible are suffering first and worst. Overall, global greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 were largely in line with record levels seen in 2024, the difference between the two years being too minor to call, the research stated.
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