We are going to blow through the guardrails for global heating according to the annual assessment published by the UN ahead of each year’s climate negotiations. And for the second time in as many months, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) has trained its focus on “overshoot” — the notion that we will exceed the thresholds we’d set but might claw our way back to safer territory at some point in the future.

“The window has closed” on the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 C goal, said Inger Andersen, the executive director of UNEP. But, she insisted, “It is not time to throw in the towel and give up — to the contrary. This is about … finding our way back as quickly as possible with as low an overshoot as possible.”

The “overshoot” concept has been burbling in technocratic circles for years, but it’s gained new urgency lately. And for fairly obvious reasons: global warming appears to have moved into a phase of acceleration, and we are nowhere near the kinds of significant, sustained cuts in fossil fuel pollution that scientists have been calling for. 

In fact, we have been tracking above the totemic 1.5 degree mark for much of the past three years. This year is all but certain to clock in above 1.5 C, and next year is likely to blow it out of the water, thanks to an El Niño supercharged by fossil fuel emissions.

The annual Emissions Gap Reports from the UN tell the baleful tale right on their covers. They’ve been tallying the gap between promises, action and results since 2013. 

Five years ago, the warning was The Heat is On: a world of climate promises not yet delivered.

In 2022 came The Closing Window: climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies. 

By 2023, eight years on from the Paris Agreement, even the communications department was getting exasperated, issuing a stylized image of a vinyl LP and slapping on the title Broken Record: temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again).

In 2024, things took a more plaintive turn: No........

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