Humanity heading for hotter world than projected last year, UN warns

Report blasts US for exacerbating the crisis

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If all the countries do what they promise to reduce heat-trapping emissions, Earth will likely still warm another 1.2°C above current temperatures, according to today’s update of climate calculations by the United Nations Environment Programme.

That’s about 0.1°C more than last year’s projections by the same science team.

“This is a worse outcome than expected last year, as a result of the formal withdrawal of the United States of America from the Paris Agreement and revised estimates of historical emissions,” the report said.

The report also blames the US for increased emissions last year, saying all the other top 20 major economies reduced their carbon pollution or at least slowed the growth in how much carbon dioxide was spewed from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

“In terms of magnitude, the increase in the United States of America (133 megatons of CO2 equivalent) far exceeded that of all other countries and was driven by increased electricity demand and a rebound of coal power generation,” the report said.

The 124 countries that increased emissions, not counting the 63 that decreased like most European nations, added 189 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2025, and 70 per cent of that increase came from the US, according to the report.

The US is going “hell-for-leather trying to block renewables while actively promoting and subsidising dirty coal — and its diplomacy is trying to make other countries also pull back on action,” said Australian climate scientist Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, which measures countries’ climate fighting plans.

“It is looking at the fire, denying there is a fire, and then pouring more petrol on it.”

The new calculations say that if countries do all they promise in the climate fighting plans they submitted to the United Nations, by 2100 the globe will be 2.6°C hotter than pre-industrial times.

If the world continues on its current path, it will be 2.8°C warmer than the last half of the 19th century, the same as last year’s projection.

Both of those temperatures blow far past the goal of less than 2°C and preferably 1.5°C adopted by the 2015 Paris climate pact.

The world is now at about 1.4°C above pre-industrial times and earlier this year, and again in this report, United Nations officials conceded that there is no way of limiting warming to the 1.5°C goal that they had embraced.

The world is falling “dangerously short” of even those goals, United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres said, “but we have the tools to change course and pull back from the brink.”

Report lead author Anne Olhoff, director of UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre, said the US policy change will likely add one-tenth of a degree Celsius to global temperatures by the end of the century.

“This report shows that [US’s] retreat isn’t just a political embarrassment. It has real consequences for the planet and for millions of people around the world,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a climate organisation.

“An extra tenth of a degree might sound insignificant, but in climate terms it is enormous.

“It means more dangerous heat waves, more destructive floods, more failed harvests and more lives lost.

“For vulnerable communities in Africa, already living on the front lines of the climate crisis, every fraction of a degree matters. These are not abstract numbers. They are human lives.”

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