WASHINGTON – The world is falling further behind in the effort to combat climate change and is now on track for more warming than scientists projected a year ago, with the United States playing a major role, according to a new United Nations report.
Even if every country fulfills its promised emissions cuts, global temperatures are likely to rise another 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) above current levels, the United Nations Environment Programme said in an update released Wednesday. That estimate is about two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit (0.1 degrees Celsius) higher than last year’s projection from the same team.
The report attributed the worsening outlook to the United States’ formal withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and updated estimates of historical emissions. It also pointed to higher U.S. emissions last year, while noting that each of the other 20 largest economies either cut carbon pollution or slowed the growth of emissions from coal, oil and natural 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. Of the 124 countries that recorded higher emissions in 2025 — excluding the 63 that cut emissions, including most European nations — total pollution increased by 189 million tons of carbon dioxide. The United States accounted for 70% of that rise, according to the report.
The United States is going “hell-for-leather trying to block renewables while actively promoting and subsidizing dirty coal — and its diplomacy is trying to make other countries also pull back on action. It is looking at the fire, denying there is a fire, and then pouring more petrol on it,” said Australian climate scientist Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, which evaluates national climate plans. Hare was not involved in the U.N. study, but, like several other outside experts, said its findings were scientifically sound.
Shooting far past Paris climate goal
The latest calculations show that if countries meet all the climate commitments they have submitted to the United Nations, global temperatures could reach 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2100. If nations continue along their current trajectory without those pledges, warming would reach 2.8 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with the latter half of the 19th century — unchanged from last year’s estimate.
Both scenarios exceed the 2015 Paris climate agreement’s targets of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), while pursuing a limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Global temperatures are already about 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. U.N. officials acknowledged earlier this year, and again in the report, that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is no longer possible. Their focus has shifted to holding warming near 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) and eventually removing enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to return temperatures to 1.5 degrees.
The world is falling “dangerously short” of even those revised objectives, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, while adding that “we have the tools to change course and pull back from the brink.”
Global emissions must fall sharply — by 18% by 2030 and 69% by 2040 — to preserve a future that remains broadly manageable, said Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme. That reduction, she said, “is the only way that we can get back to a semblance of a reality that is still largely manageable without major impacts and therefore that makes every sense.”
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“The report’s message is clear,” said climate scientist Adelle Thomas, vice chair of a U.N. scientific assessment on climate impacts who was not involved in the study. “We know what needs to be done. We have the tools to do it. And delay only makes the challenge more dangerous and more expensive for all.”
An added tenth of a degree of danger
Anne Olhoff, the report’s lead author and director of the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre, said the U.S. policy shift is expected to add one-tenth of a degree Celsius — nearly two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit — to global temperatures by the end of the century.
“This report shows that America’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 the climate organization Power Shift Africa. “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.”
Hare said that additional tenth of a degree could expose another 140 million people to “dangerously hot conditions” and raise the risk of the Amazon rainforest or the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica reaching collapse. The added warming could also cost the global economy about $1.2 trillion, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.
The United Nations estimate may understate the U.S. impact, said Johan Rockstrom, director of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research. As the world’s largest historical climate polluter retreats from efforts to curb warming, other nations may weaken their own climate action, he said.
“The rest of the world is exhausted when it comes to counting the damage that the U.S. is willingly doing to allies, multilateral structures, economic cooperation, disaster relief,” said Australian climate scientist Malte Meinshausen. “The rest of the world should probably continue to focus even less on the U.S.”
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