Climate Action Tracker: Current Policies Lock In 2.7°C Warming, Blowing Past Every Threshold Governments Agreed To

CAT's latest analysis shows projected warming ticked up to 2.7°C under current policies — 1.2°C past the agreed limit. Even full compliance with all pledges still lands at 1.9°C. The gap between promise and physics keeps widening.

The Climate Action Tracker's new analysis delivers numbers that should end any remaining ambiguity about where the world stands: current government policies put the planet on track for 2.7°C of warming by 2100, up from 2.6°C in last year's assessment. The trajectory is moving in the wrong direction. The 1.5°C target agreed in Paris a decade ago is not just at risk — it will be breached within years, and even the most optimistic scenario (every pledge fulfilled, every target met) still lands at 1.9°C.

The report arrives as UN climate talks proceed in Antalya, Turkey, without the United States at the table. The talks have centered on the concept of 'overshoot' — the growing acceptance that the world will blow past 1.5°C and the question of what happens next. UN Secretary General António Guterres used the occasion to repeat the call for rapid fossil fuel phase-out, but the CAT data shows the call has been largely ignored where it counts: in actual policy implementation. Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics (a CAT partner), framed the choice starkly: continue subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and accept mounting economic damage, mortality, and unmanageable disasters — or pivot to clean energy solutions that are already cheaper. The framing is correct but not new; the same choice has been articulated at every COP for a decade. What has changed is the shrinking window. Each year of inaction narrows the remaining carbon budget and raises the minimum warming floor. There are real bright spots buried in the data. Clean energy investment now runs at double the rate of fossil fuel investment. Electric vehicle adoption is accelerating. Amazon deforestation in Brazil has dropped sharply. Global carbon emissions are projected to dip slightly this year. These are genuine structural shifts, not cosmetic ones — but they are happening too slowly to bend the trajectory below 2°C under current policy frameworks. The report's most damaging finding is directional: the gap between pledges and policies is not closing. Several major emitters — the US, Canada, and New Zealand are named specifically — are actively decelerating their climate efforts. Sarah Heck, lead author, described the slowdown as reaching a 'staggering level.' This is not a story about countries trying hard and falling short. It is a story about countries choosing not to try. The structural problem is extraction in slow motion. Fossil fuel incumbents continue capturing policy benefits (subsidies, regulatory protection, delayed phase-outs) while the costs of inaction — extreme weather, agricultural disruption, displacement, health impacts — are distributed across billions of people with the least political leverage. The 20-year version of this trajectory is not theoretical; parts of it are already observable in intensifying heat events, flood cycles, and insurance market failures. Greta Thunberg's presence in Antalya drew attention, but the signal that matters is the number: 2.7°C. That figure represents the integrated consequence of every subsidy extended, every regulation delayed, every pledge unfulfilled. It is the score, and it went up.