Humanity is losing ground in the fight against climate change, and the latest United Nations report says the picture is worse than experts expected a year ago. The United States is one of the main reasons.
The UN Environment Programme released its updated climate calculations this week. Its science team found that even if every country does what it has promised to cut heat-trapping gases, the planet will still warm by about 2.6 degrees Celsius by the year 2100 compared to pre-industrial times.
That is about 0.1 degrees higher than last year's estimate. If the world carries on as it is now, without any new promises, the warming could reach 2.8 degrees Celsius. Both numbers are far above the goal set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which wanted countries to keep warming below 2 degrees and ideally under 1.5 degrees.
The world is already about 1.4 degrees warmer than before factories and coal power took over. UN officials admitted in this report that keeping temperatures under 1.5 degrees is no longer realistic. Now they are hoping to stop the warming at around 1.8 degrees and then find a way to pull carbon dioxide out of the air to bring it back down. Even that plan is shaky, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres says the world is falling dangerously short of even these lower goals.
So what is the US doing wrong? According to the report, the US was the only major economy that failed to cut its carbon pollution last year, or even slow its growth. Its emissions went up by 133 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, which is more than the increase from every other country combined.
The report blames higher electricity demand and more coal power being burned again. Out of the 189 million tons that 124 countries added to global emissions in 2025, about 70 percent came from the US alone. The report also points to America's formal exit from the Paris Agreement as a big reason things are getting worse.
Scientists say the American effect could be even bigger than the numbers show. Johan Rockstrom, who runs the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany, warned that when the largest historical polluter steps back, other countries may start relaxing their own efforts.
Bill Hare, the head of Climate Analytics, was even harsher. He said the US is pushing hard against renewable energy while backing dirty coal, and that its diplomats are pressing other countries to slow down too. He described it as a country that sees the fire, denies it is there, and then pours more petrol on it.
Now, you might ask why an extra tenth of a degree matters so much. Experts say it matters a lot. Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, said that small change means more dangerous heatwaves, more floods, more failed harvests, and more deaths. For African communities that already live on the front lines of the climate crisis, every fraction of a degree counts.
Bill Hare said the extra tenth of a degree would push around 140 million more people into dangerously hot conditions. It would also raise the chances of big systems like the Amazon rainforest and the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica collapsing. Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, estimated that it could cost the world about 1.2 trillion dollars from the global economy.
The UN report is not all bad news, though. Its authors say the tools to fix this already exist. To get back on track, global carbon emissions need to drop by 18 percent by 2030 and by 69 percent by 2040. Climate scientist Adelle Thomas, who was not part of the study, put it simply. We know what needs to be done, we have the tools, and every year we wait makes the problem harder and more expensive for everyone.
For Africa, the message is clear. We may have contributed the least to this mess, but we will feel it the most. Droughts, floods, and hunger do not wait for politics to settle. The question now is whether the big polluters will step up, and whether our own leaders will push harder for clean energy while there is still time.
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