350.org responds to UN report confirming world set to breach 1.5°C: ‘Every fraction of a degree’ still worth fighting for

The world is on track to cross the 1.5°C global warming threshold, likely within the next few years, according to a major new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report released today. Limiting Overshoot finds that even the most optimistic scenario now points to a peak temperature rise of 1.8°C, with most other projections higher still, but concludes that an "overshoot, peak and decline" pathway can still bring the world back below 1.5°C if governments act immediately on emissions, methane and the fossil fuel phase-out.

350.org says the report is both a warning and a call to action. Overshoot may now be unavoidable, but its depth and duration are not fixed – these will be decided by political choices being made right now.

Fenton Lutunatabua, 350.org Pacific

"We absolutely have to claw back every fraction of a degree possible. Just because overshoot is deemed inevitable, that doesn't mean we stop fighting to limit it to as short an overshoot as possible. It is still within our grasp to limit how high temperatures rise and how long they stay above 1.5°C. Every day above 1.5°C is another coastline swallowed, another plantation flooded, another coral reef lost.

"We have the stark science outlining our situation, and we have the solutions, what we need is the political will to see them through. As our leaders gather in Palau for the Forum Leaders meeting, all eyes are on one of the world's largest fossil fuel exporters, Australia, and how they act on this urgent warning. The climate crisis is here and any delay in mitigation, in phasing out coal, oil and gas, will only make our adaptation pressures harder and more expensive to bear."

Savio Carvalho, 350.org Head of Campaigns and Networks, said the report's findings echo what frontline communities are already living through:

"This report confirms what communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis have been telling us for years: that delay is not a neutral act, it is a decision. We've just watched a glacier collapse bury Himalayan communities under mud and water, and we're watching Pacific nations lose land to the sea in real time. UNEP is right that overshoot doesn't have to mean surrender: the size and length of that overshoot is still being written by the decisions governments make this year, on fossil fuel phase-out, technology transfer and on finance for the countries least responsible and most exposed. There is no version of 'limiting overshoot' that doesn't start with ending new coal, oil and gas expansion today."

UNEP's report warns that above 1.5°C, climate risks and the likelihood of triggering irreversible tipping points, including destabilisation of major ice sheets, degradation of the Amazon rainforest, and disruption of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, intensify with every additional fraction of a degree and every year spent above the threshold. It stresses that carbon dioxide removal can only credibly contribute to a return below 1.5°C if it comes in addition to, not instead of, sustained and immediate cuts to fossil fuel emissions, and that countries with the greatest historical responsibility for the crisis must act fastest and with the greatest ambition.

350.org is calling on governments, and major fossil fuel exporters gathering this week with Pacific leaders at the Pacific Islands Forum in Palau, to treat the report as a mandate for accelerated coal, oil and gas phase-out, not a reason to delay further.