Five Key Facts From the UN's Big Climate Report

The United Nations released a major report on Wednesday warning that the world is not doing enough to slow climate change. The report is called the Emissions Gap Report and comes from the UN Environment Program, known as UNEP. It checks how much pollution countries are releasing and whether their plans are strong enough to keep Earth from getting dangerously hot. Scientists and leaders around the world pay close attention to this report each year.

In 2015, nearly every country signed the Paris Agreement. That deal asked nations to stop Earth from warming more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to try to keep warming under 1.5°C. Scientists say staying under 1.5°C would help prevent the worst climate disasters. The new report says the window to meet that 1.5°C goal has now closed, but experts still say every bit of action matters.

Right now, the world is on track to warm by 2.8°C by the year 2100. Countries make climate promises called Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, which spell out how much each country will cut its pollution. Even if all countries keep their newest promises, warming would still reach 2.6°C by 2100. Both outcomes would lead to bigger floods, worse droughts, rising seas, and more wildfires around the globe.

The report says there is still a chance to limit warming to about 1.7°C or 1.8°C. To do that, the world needs to cut carbon emissions by 18% by 2030, then 45% by 2035, and 69% by 2040 compared to 2025 levels. That is a huge and rapid reduction that would also require pulling carbon dioxide out of the air. UNEP leader Inger Andersen said countries must work together quickly to make this possible.

The United States stands out as a big problem in the report. While most large countries have slowed their emissions growth, US pollution has gone up sharply and 'far exceeded that of all other countries,' the report says. Growing electricity use from data centers and new policies favoring fossil fuels like coal are part of the reason. The US has also chosen to leave the Paris Agreement, making global climate goals even harder to reach.

The report does include good news, though. Since the Paris Agreement was signed about ten years ago, renewable energy has grown much faster than scientists expected, with solar power growing seven times faster than predicted. The report studied more than 200 climate policies around the world and found that many of them are working. Experts say the key now is to scale up these clean energy solutions even faster so the whole world can benefit.