Global pledges to cut the gases that trap heat in the atmosphere fall well short of the Paris climate goals, and would leave the world on track for 2.6C of warming this century, the United Nations warned on Wednesday.
The findings come from the annual Emissions Gap Report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The document highlights the distance between what governments promise on global warming and what they actually do, and it sets out the pressure on world leaders before the COP31 climate summit in November.
Guterres says the 1.5C limit is slipping away
According to the report, even if countries carry out their latest climate pledges in full, global temperatures could still climb 2.6C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. That would clearly breach the Paris agreement, which aims to keep warming well below 2C and to pursue the safer limit of 1.5C.
The report said any realistic chance of holding warming to 1.5C had been lost, a result of decades of insufficient action on climate change. UN chief Antonio Guterres, launching the report in a statement, said the world could no longer avoid overshooting that limit. “The world can no longer avoid overshooting the 1.5 degree limit, and the consequences are already devastating,” he said.
Guterres listed floods, heatwaves and wildfires among the damage already being felt, noting that the people least responsible for the problem are suffering first and worst. He said deep and immediate cuts were needed to protect humanity from worsening impacts.
Emissions held near record highs in 2025
Global greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 were broadly level with the record set in 2024, the report said, and the gap between the two years was too small to call. Carbon emissions from burning coal, oil and gas, the main driver of climate change, rose slightly over the same period.
Guterres said emissions were still at record levels and that national climate plans and current policies fell far short of what was needed. The report said that if only existing policies were kept, warming would reach 2.8C.
Scientists quoted in the report warn that each extra fraction of a degree above 1.5C brings more extreme weather and a greater risk of irreversible changes, from dying coral reefs to melting permafrost. The world has already warmed by roughly 1.4C compared with pre-industrial times, and crossing 1.5C is expected within a few years.
The G20 group produces about three-quarters of global emissions, and Guterres said “all countries, especially the big emitters, must do more” to stop the planet heating up.
United States drives the largest rise among top emitters
Report co-author Anne Olhoff said this year’s outlook was worse than last year’s because of the formal withdrawal of the United States from the Paris accord, along with upward revisions to historical emissions. The report added that emissions growth had slowed across the G20, but the US was a “major exception”.
Preliminary 2025 data for the world’s top six emitters showed increases in the US, Indonesia and China, and decreases in India, Russia and the European Union. In absolute terms, the US increase of 133 megatons of CO2 equivalent far exceeded that of any other country, driven by higher electricity demand and a rebound in coal power generation.
- United States: increase, with 133 megatons of CO2 equivalent
- Indonesia and China: increases
- India, Russia and the European Union: decreases
Turkey recorded the next-largest increase. It is hosting the UN climate summit in Antalya from November 9 to 20. The US is the world’s second-largest polluter after China, and President Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax while rolling back clean energy policies and boosting fossil fuel production.
Scenario for 1.5C depends on steep emissions cuts
UNEP executive secretary Inger Andersen told reporters that no country was shielded from climate change, and that its effects were being felt “on every nation on the planet, including the US”. The report outlines one pathway with a 50 percent chance of bringing warming back to 1.5C by 2100.
That route requires warming to peak at around 1.8C by 2050, followed by large-scale removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, the scenario assumes emissions fall by six percent every year until 2035, a pace far beyond current projections.
Bill Hare, chief executive of the policy institute Climate Analytics, said governments needed to act quickly to enact policies that reduce fossil fuel use. Some climate-vulnerable developing nations have accused larger emitters of abandoning the Paris goals, and a confrontation over the 1.5C target is expected at COP31.
Mohamed Adow, director of the Kenya-based think tank Power Shift Africa, called the situation a historic failure of political leadership. Guterres acknowledged a climate “leadership gap”, but said overshooting 1.5C “is not surrender”.
