UN admits 1.5C target will be exceeded, urges strategy to cool planet back below threshold
The United Nations has acknowledged that Earth will soon surpass the internationally agreed safe warming threshold and has set out a new strategy for bringing temperatures back down, according to a first-of-its-kind report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) issued Wednesday (September 2, 2026).
The report marks a strategic retreat in the fight against climate change, officials said, admitting that the world has lost its chance to prevent some of the worst harms of global warming. Instead, the document urges governments to limit excessive warming and then cool the planet back to the target agreed in the 2015 Paris climate accord.
A hump-shaped path to cooling
The report says current policies would push temperatures to 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Even under the most optimistic scenario, warming would peak at 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) around mid-century before gradually declining, ideally to below the 1.5-degree mark by the end of the century.
According to the report, the world will cross the 1.5-degree threshold "in the next few years." The strategy envisions a hump-shaped trajectory: temperatures pass 1.5 degrees, peak, and then slowly cool back below the limit as fossil fuel use is phased out and technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the air are developed.
The world is currently at 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, based on a 20-year average, some scientists have calculated.
Official and scientific reaction
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, "Humanity is speeding past the limit to avoid climate catastrophe."
UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen told reporters, "Let's be very clear, the 1.5 target is still the goal. But now we need to approach it differently from above."
Report co-author Richard Betts, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter, called the findings a reality check. "We have to live with this warmer world," he said, adding, "But there's still a lot we can do to limit warming."
Another co-author, Joeri Rogelj of Imperial College, warned that every five years of delay in reducing emissions adds at least a tenth of a degree to peak warming. The report cautions that overshooting the target could trigger "tipping points" with irreversible and cascading effects, including the loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, the loss of the Amazon rainforest and the shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean circulation system.
Outside scientists echoed the urgency. University of Victoria's Andrew Weaver, who was not part of the study, said the 1.5 limit is not "some magical climate cliff" where it's just game over. Stanford University's Rob Jackson, also not part of the report, said, "We were unable to stop the runaway train of global emissions to avoid 1.5 C of warming. Now overshoot scenarios require us to stop the train quickly and to back it up. Is it our best hope? Absolutely. Is it likely? Absolutely not."
What can still be done
The report suggests that ending fossil fuel use and developing carbon removal technologies could help bring temperatures back down. It also notes that planting trees could, at most, shave a tenth of a degree off global temperatures.
Officials acknowledged that even with these measures, decades of increased weather-related disasters, rising seas, extinctions and melting ice and glaciers are likely ahead. The report is described by its authors as a realistic look at the path forward, with temporary overshoot likely but not necessarily permanent.