UN climate report spells disaster
What’s Happening?
On the 2nd of September, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released the “State of the Global Climate 2025” report, and the UN released the “Limiting Overshoot Report”. These reports make clear that limiting global warming to 1.5°C (2.8°F) is out of reach. It also states that every possible measure should be taken in order to limit overshoot as much as we can!
The response from the international community to deal with climate change has been insufficient, putting the 1.5°C target set in the Paris Climate Agreement out of reach. The most optimistic scenario now projects a warming of 1.8°C; the most likely scenario projects 2.6°C of warming.
For years we have been fighting for a brighter future for ourselves and our planet, but this report proves we have officially hit the deadline that was projected for 2030. I have been saying for ages that my generation will have barely made it out of high school (the waiting room of life) when we hit a point of no return, but now that this overshoot has already reached us, where do we go now? Our future has been stolen by the monolith of capitalist greed, and yet no one even understands the extent of this information above. Many of the people fighting so hard have quite literally already lived their lives, and we are still dreaming, and in that dreaming our future wanes in our ignorance. We must change immediately!
First They Came
“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me!”
– by Pastor Martin Niemöller
Written by someone heavily involved in the Holocaust, this poem emphasizes the existential dread of staying in place and never standing up because if we don’t ever speak up for those silenced, nothing will ever change and we will eventually be hit too! Our climate needs a voice too!
In numbers
The global mean near-surface temperature rose to +1.55°C (with a 0.13° variance) in 2024, and decreased slightly in 2025 to +1.43°C (with a 0.13° variance), mainly due to a La Ninã effect. An even better indicator is the ocean heat content, as the ocean absorbs 91% of all excess heat. The ocean warmed by 16ZJ (Zetta Joule) in 2024, which is the equivalent of running over 250 billion water boilers the entire year round.
A graph for global surface temperatures, a significant increase in temperature can be seen. A graph for global sea surface temperatures, again a significant increase in temperature.
What the numbers mean
The planet is warming at an alarming and increasingly faster pace. This is already causing harm to ecosystems, changing precipitation patterns, and raising sea levels. This causes failures or reductions in crops, coastal erosion, stronger and more frequent tornadoes and cyclones, and the recent glacier collapse and flood in Nepal.
Why is it a problem?
Overshoot—or, more precisely, climatic exceedance—is what this moment represents. However, the problem is not merely crossing a defined numerical threshold. What the UNEP report makes clear is that the magnitude and duration of exceedance matter: a lower peak and shorter period above 1.5°C mean fewer risks and greater adaptive capacity than prolonged, substantially higher warming. Overshoot does not mean everything is already lost, nor that there is nothing more to do; but, to be fair, we are already very late. It means our decisions now will determine how high warming peaks, how long it persists, and how much irreversible change becomes unavoidable.
This is why 1.5°C must be understood with care. It is not a magical line separating a “safe” climate from an unsafe one. Rather, increasing anthropogenic warming progressively raises the probability of crossing ecological thresholds beyond which particular changes may become irreversible on human timescales. The climate system, being non-linear, does not automatically “reset” when temperatures decline; returning below 1.5°C would not necessarily restore every system altered during exceedance. Indeed, in one important sense, the 1.5°C level has already been crossed: 2024 was the first calendar year in which global mean temperature exceeded 1.5°C above the 1850–1900 pre-industrial average, and the 2023–2025 period also averaged above 1.5°C. This does not technically mean that the Paris Agreement’s long-term 1.5°C threshold has formally been breached, but it makes “approaching exceedance” an increasingly inadequate description of where we are. Hence UNEP’s emphasis on minimising the peak, shortening overshoot, and ultimately returning below 1.5°C.
What struck us the most, going through the report alongside its various coverages, was the sheer wilful disregard with which this possibility is received. The science has been posited repeatedly—over summits, conferences and discussion panels—but how many of us have registered it not merely as a problem among other problems, but as a crisis? What is perhaps most disturbing is not that these projections have become so severe, but how readily they continue to exist alongside the “ordinary”, familiar rhythms of public life. The warning signs accumulate—record after record, projection after projection, each one carrying implications that should be impossible to absorb as business as usual—yet the dominant response remains one of compartmentalisation. Climate change is discussed as a specialised field of knowledge, a policy challenge, an item on an international agenda, or an unfortunate background condition to other political and economic concerns. Its implications are rarely allowed to reorganise the terms through which we understand the present. Catastrophe, in this sense, does not arrive only through dramatic events; it also takes shape through our capacity to encounter extraordinary warnings and continue inhabiting the same assumptions afterwards. The most unsettling question, then, is not whether the science has been clear enough. It is whether we have allowed ourselves to understand what its clarity demands of us.
There is something profoundly unsettling about inheriting a crisis we did not create on anything like an equal scale, while being asked to treat its consequences as an inevitable feature of our future. Many who have spent decades debating, governing, and profiting through this crisis have already lived much of their lives; younger generations are still trying to imagine what theirs might look like. Our future cannot become the residual space left over after the demands of capitalistic greed have been satisfied. Yet the scale of this information still seems strangely difficult to register—not merely intellectually, but existentially. We have known about the problem for decades; what remains uncertain is whether we have allowed that knowledge to alter how we organise our lives, economies and expectations of the future. If the future is already being narrowed, acknowledging the crisis is not a matter of despair. It is the beginning of refusing to inherit its terms.
Nor can this be treated as a jigsaw puzzle awaiting a single “solution”. UNEP points towards mitigation, adaptation and carbon dioxide removal as interconnected responses: emissions must fall rapidly; societies must adapt to unavoidable impacts; and carbon removal may eventually be necessary to bring temperatures down. However, removal cannot become a technological alibi for continued emissions. Its scale, costs and uncertainties make it a complement to deep emissions reductions, not a substitute. Planetary boundaries are not external constraints upon the economy; they are the conditions of life itself. Yet the dominant economy routinely externalises ecological limits, translating destruction through “net zero”, “offsets” and “credits” into measurable liabilities, tradable claims and compensable losses. This is the colonisation of ecology: the subsumption of oikos into a logic of extraction, accumulation and consumption. The consequences, however, are not externalised equally—they are borne disproportionately across lives, places and generations. Responsibility therefore cannot be reduced to governments, corporations or individual choices alone. The crisis is structurally produced, unevenly borne, yet collectively inhabited.
Exceedance, then, is not surrender. Every fraction of a degree avoided and every year of overshoot shortened preserves ecological and adaptive capacity and reduces the risk of irreversible loss. Perhaps our first task is to acknowledge the crisis, rather than retreat into comforting distractions or quick-fixes, and begin telling the transgressive story of flourishing together: of practising vulnerability together, and of learning to live, care and act from within the politics of our shared vulnerability. Because the oikos cannot indefinitely sustain an economic ego that consumes the very conditions upon which the existence of all life depends. There is still time to turn this “point of no return” into a point of departure—towards a different way of inhabiting our shared habitats.
People have the Power
Taking a deep breath together and accepting that we’re in very deep trouble, it is imperative that humanity collectively and simultaneously halts temperature rise and implements adaptation policies and systems.
In a world changed by looming and irreversible climate damage, it is crucial to base decisions on resiliency and sustainability, and implement the best systems and policies. Resourcefulness, compassion, creativity, and social justice will be cornerstones of the transformational changes we need.
Acknowledge. Corporate greed has brought us to climate tipping points, and companies should be cited and held responsible for paying reparations. The climate patterns of tomorrow will be different, and we must adjust. Migrations of people, animals, and plants are already underway; we must gird ourselves and our systems to accommodate them. Local preparation happening everywhere soon is key.
Vote. For local and national elections, exercise your sacred right to vote if you’re able. Elect officials who will uphold laws and who will immediately implement low-carbon policies and prepare for environmental and societal changes due to higher temperatures.
Your climate group can be a support engine for such candidates and hold them accountable to their promises. Run for office yourself, perhaps.
Show up. Schedule group meetings, appointments, and press conferences with elected officials. Follow up to provoke action. Photograph and publicize demonstrations and visits with public officials.
Educate yourself. Read Greta Thunberg’s The Climate Book. Read the best and most trustworthy authors of climate science, such as Johan Rockström, Katharine Hayhoe, Peter Gleick, Sameemul Huq, and more. Start local to implement system changes-–campaign for local laws banning single-use plastic, protecting wilderness land tracts, keeping drinking water safe. Read history, psychology, philosophy, art, poetry, humor. Get outdoors to be with nature. Learn practical skills. Knowledge is wealth; share it.
Write letters. Letters are still powerful tools. Use concise, focused language. Organize letter-writing groups to write to newspaper editors, CEOs, company managers, and the environmental officers of companies to congratulate them, or to hound them for answers about their pathetic inactivity. Thank officials when they do good work. Deliver sacks of letters to your city hall, in person. Document. Keep copies. If you send email, also send hard, paper copies to recipients to ensure receipt! Track arrival, call to confirm receipt, and follow up for responses. Widely distribute copies to your supporters and additional officials in order to maintain transparency. A paper trail cannot be hidden away from the public.
Network. Get training. Go door to door in your neighborhood. Gather signatures. Build your action group. These are critical tools. Pick your style - talk about world affairs or the fate of your community gardens, join your climate group, or paint protest signs and march in the street. Create a support hub for action. All action attracts more action.
Prepare. Resilience begins with preparation. At your local level, ask your local fire department and other emergency services to offer emergency preparedness talks to the public. Organize with schools, libraries, community centers, and places of worship. Local newspapers will likely be happy to publicize these. Learn how to make homes, neighborhoods, schools, and businesses more fire-, flood-, or earthquake-resistant.
Talk. Use tips from the Fridays for Future Newsletter or get online training on starting one-on-one climate conversations. Speak during the public-comments section of town hall meetings and bring your climate group to join in and cheer each other on. Solar and wind energy, extreme weather, climate and social justice, local building codes and standards, water-guzzling data centers, and making sustainability a law are all issues that now impact every village, city, state, and country.
Organize public talks. Lectures, a speaker series, or movie screenings at libraries, schools, and faith locations attract and educate the public. Rally actors, musicians, writers, and artists to create community events. The Northern Arizona Climate Change Alliance offers livestreamed lectures and archived recordings in its Climate Talks for Everyone.
Meet the press. Create a list of local and national media so you can send them photos and press releases about your events to raise awareness, grow your activist group, and gain momentum. Invite journalists to interview you.
Ask for help. Get support from your family, friends, teachers and professors, scientists and doctors, religious leaders, neighbors, or famous people. Stay updated, involved, and inspired. Inform elected officials about your events and campaigns and ask for their support. Ask friends to put up posters to advertise your events.
Persist. One person can be powerful. If you’ve ever slept in a room with just one mosquito, you know how powerful “one” can be.
Restore. Get enough sleep. Find the humor and reasons to laugh. These lower stress levels and boost your mood. Surround yourself with people who bring out your very best. Share your workload, empower others. Mentoring is a win-win for both your mentee and you. Find a theme song to inspire yourselves—try this.
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