Current Policies Put World on Course for 2.7C Warming, Overshooting 1.5C Target, Climate Tracker Warns

In Antalya, on Turkey's southern coast, delegates from nearly every country except the United States have gathered for UN climate talks. The conversation in the rooms has turned to a word few wanted to say a decade ago: overshoot. A new analysis from Climate Action Tracker, published this week, gives that word a number.

If governments keep to the policies they have in place today, the planet will warm by an average of 2.7C by the end of the century compared with preindustrial times. That is up slightly from the 2.6C the same group projected in last year's analysis. The report describes the trajectory as an irrecoverable overshoot of global temperature thresholds, one that will expose billions of people to severe climate impacts because governments have stalled for so long on cutting the emissions that heat the planet.

The figure sits far above the 1.5C limit that countries agreed a decade ago, a line the world is expected to cross within just a few years. Scientists have warned that beyond it, storms, droughts, heatwaves and flooding that are already harmful will become intolerable in parts of the world, and could set off runaway climate change that cannot be contained.

The report does not say the outcome is fixed. If countries acted decisively to slash emissions, the projections would become less daunting. But even the most optimistic scenario it models, in which every pledge, target and long-term promise made by governments is fulfilled, still ends at 1.9C by 2100. And experts note that countries have routinely flouted such targets, which leaves leaders at what they call a crunch moment.

Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, a CAT partner organisation, framed the choice starkly. Governments can keep supporting the fossil fuel industry, he said, and consign humanity to insurmountable economic damage, rising deaths from heat and climate-driven disease, and disasters people cannot adapt to. Or they can pivot to solutions that are available and cheaper than ever. Hare added that passing 1.5C must not become an excuse for defeatism, because every small increment of warming matters. The CAT findings resemble a recent UN analysis, which draws on earlier CAT data for its own projections.

The report also points to some reasons for optimism. Carbon pollution is set to dip slightly this year. Clean energy investment is now double that going into fossil fuels, electric car use is soaring, and deforestation of the Amazon in Brazil has fallen sharply.

Still, Sarah Heck, the report's lead author, said governments collectively are not moving fast enough to escape what she called the emerging overshoot trap. Some countries, including the United States, Canada and New Zealand, are slowing their climate action to a staggering level, she said.

On Tuesday, UN secretary-general António Guterres said the looming overshoot should compel governments to act quickly to phase out the fossil fuels driving the crisis. Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate advocate, arrived in Antalya the same day and warned that everything and everyone we love is at stake. What to watch now is whether the talks produce any movement on fossil fuel phase-out, and whether the progress in clean energy can be made to outweigh the policies still pushing temperatures toward 2.7C.