The chance of holding global warming to 1.5C without overshooting has been lost, the United Nations Environment Programme said in its 2026 Emissions Gap Report, published on 21 October.
"The opportunity to bridge the 1.5C emissions gap with 'no or limited' overshoot has been lost," the report states. Its title is The Point of Return. Warming above 1.5C is now treated as imminent; the task it sets is to limit how high temperatures go and how long they stay there.
Where the numbers point
Under current policies, the report projects about 2.8C of warming this century, with further rise after that. If every country delivers its current national pledge and keeps up similar effort, warming lands near 2.6C.
Both figures are worse than last year's. Two changes explain the shift: the United States has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, and estimates of historical emissions have been revised upward. Pledges submitted since the last report have made little difference.
The lowest-overshoot path
The report models a scenario in which peak warming stays at 1.7-1.8C around mid-century and temperatures return to or below 1.5C by 2100, with roughly a 50% chance of success.
Getting there would require global emissions to fall about 5.7% a year for the next decade. Coal-fired energy would have to drop 15% by 2030 against 2025 levels, then 55% by 2035, 75% by 2040 and 90% by 2050. Renewables, grids, storage, efficiency and methane cuts all carry part of the load.
What the authors say can still work
The report does not argue that climate policy has failed. It lists solar, wind, electric vehicles and efficiency programmes that have already produced measured emissions cuts in individual countries, and argues those policies can be scaled.
It calls the shortfall "a leadership gap" rather than a technical one, and asks governments to publish dated plans for moving off fossil fuels, with support for affected workers and regions.
Every fraction of a degree still changes the outcome. The difference between the 2.6C pledge path and the lowest-overshoot path is the difference between a return to 1.5C this century and no return at all.