World heading for ‘irrevocable overshoot’ of global temperature thresholds, analysis warns

 

World heading for ‘irrevocable overshoot’ of global temperature thresholds, analysis warns

Failure to cut emissions will ‘consign humanity to disasters they are unable to adapt to’, report says

 

Oliver Milman in Antalya, Turkey

Thu 12 Nov 2026 04.00 CET

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/nov/12/world-heading-for-irrevocable-overshoot-of-global-temperature-thresholds-analysis-warns

 

The world is heading for an “irrecoverable overshoot” of global temperature thresholds that will plunge billions of people into disastrous climate impacts because governments have stalled for so long to cut planet-heating emissions, analysis has found.

Under current policies, the planet will heat up by 2.7C on average by the end of the century compared with preindustrial times, the report by Climate Action Tracker (CAT) found. This is up slightly from a prediction of 2.6C in the group’s analysis conducted last year.

This level of warming smashes the 1.5C threshold that was agreed by countries a decade ago but is set to be breached in just a few years. Scientists have warned that beyond this point already harmful storms, droughts, heatwaves, flooding and other impacts will become intolerable for parts of the world and potentially trigger runaway climate change that won’t be contained.

 

Countries, minus the US, are gathered in the Turkish city of Antalya for UN climate talks that have centred on the looming “overshoot” of the temperature target. This reality should compel governments to act quickly to phase out use of the fossil fuels that are causing the climate crisis, the UN secretarygeneral, António Guterres, said on Tuesday.

If countries did act decisively to slash emissions then the future temperature projections would become less daunting, the CAT report states. However, in even the most optimistic scenario – where all pledges, targets and other long-term promises made by countries were fulfilled – the world would still heat up by 1.9C by the end of the century.

Such targets have been routinely flouted by the countries that have made them, however. This means leaders face a crunch moment, experts say.

“The stark choice for governments is to either continue to support the fossil fuel industry, which would consign humanity to insurmountable economic damages, rising mortality from heat and climate-driven diseases and disasters that they are unable to adapt to – or pivot to the solutions which are available and cheaper than ever,” says Bill Hare, chief executive of CAT partner organisation Climate Analytics.

Hare said exceeding 1.5C warming “cannot be an excuse to open the door to defeatism” and that every small increment of temperature rise will be significant. The CAT analysis is similar to one recently put out by the UN, which uses previous CAT data to inform its own projections.

 

While the world is failing to cut emissions in line with the science and countries’ own promises, carbon pollution is set to dip slightly this year and CAT pointed to some causes for optimism. Clean energy investment is now double that of fossil fuels, electric car use is soaring and the deforestation of the Amazon in Brazil has fallen sharply.

But much more will need to be done to avert disastrous climate impacts. Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate advocate, arrived in Antalya on Tuesday and warned that “everything and everyone we love is at stake” because of the failure to confront the climate crisis.

“Governments collectively are simply not moving fast enough to adopt the policies that would enable us to escape from the emerging overshoot trap,” said Sarah Heck, lead author of the CAT report. Some countries, such as the US, Canada and New Zealand, are even slowing down their climate action to a “staggering level”, she added.

 

Will brutal wildfires force French leaders to take climate crisis seriously?

 

This article is more than 3 months old

Analysis

Will brutal wildfires force French leaders to take climate crisis seriously?

This article is more than 3 months old

Angelique Chrisafis

Campaigners worry politicians will have moved on by time of elections in which Marine Le Pen is expected to challenge

 

Fri 31 Jul 2026 06.00 CEST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/31/wildfires-french-leaders-climate-crisis-elections

 

As dozens of forest wildfires burned across France this week amid the summer’s fourth brutal heatwave and increasing air pollution, some wondered whether voters’ first-hand experience of the climate emergency would change the political debate ahead of next year’s presidential election.

 

The Green leader, Marine Tondelier, who cut short a tour of France on medical advice that at seven months pregnant she should avoid breathing smoke-filled air in the south-west near a huge wildfire in Gironde, said the political class still had its head in the sand.

 

She said the government had ignored her plea for cross-party crisis talks to declare a national state of emergency on the climate this summer. She called for a new “climate welfare state” in France to help those whose lives were being affected as about 260,000 people were evacuated because of wildfires across the country.

 

But French politicians focused instead this week on arguments over budgets, crisis planning and criticisms over the levels of state funding for emergency services and equipment to fight fires, including water-bombing planes. The more complex longer-term issues of cutting emissions and structural societal changes to address climate heating were largely left aside.

 

The president, Emmanuel Macron, said it was not the time to analyse lessons to be learned while France was still in “full battle” against fires.

 

 

Macron, whose decade as president comes to an end next spring, returned to his war vocabulary of the 2020 Covid pandemic. As the Gironde wildfire burned an area four times the size of Paris, Macron flew to the crisis operations centre in Bordeaux, saying France was facing its “hardest situation since the second world war”.

 

He also said the situation was “totally atypical”, suggesting the wildfire was out of the ordinary. Climate experts said growing numbers of forest fires had been predictable amid rising temperatures.

 

Most political parties will not clarify their full election manifestos – and positions on the climate crisis – until this winter, and some climate campaigners worry that by then the fires and heatwaves may be less present in the media and people’s minds.

 

Marine Le Pen, who leads the far-right anti-immigration National Rally (RN), is seen as having a good chance of reaching the final round vote in the presidential race. During the second round of the last contest, in 2022, Le Pen said: “I have never been a climate sceptic”. But the following year she said the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was “alarmist”, and some RN politicians have in the past questioned the role of human activity in climate heating.

 

The RN has also opposed the workings of the EU’s green deal, which is designed to make the EU carbon neutral by 2050. But since the heatwaves of the start of the summer, key figures in Le Pen’s party have sought to stress that the RN is not a climate crisis denier. This week, the RN focused more on the heroism of firefighters and alleged underfunding of fire services by the state than on long-term environmental action.

 

The radical left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon earlier in July proposed reorganising French regions into “eco-regions” to ensure water supply and deal with the climate crisis.

 

Rémi Lefebvre, a professor of political science at the University of Lille, said of the current wildfires’ impact on the presidential campaign: “Ecology will probably be talked about more during the election campaign, but I’m not convinced that it will reconfigure French political life.” He said serious wildfires in previous years had not forced a change of direction and French politics had shown itself to be “too short-termist” to dig deep into changing models of society.

 

Lefebvre said Le Pen did not take a stance of denying climate change “because that is no longer possible … we’ve passed that point”. But he said the broader issue was political inaction on climate challenges. He said a lot of French people felt those in charge were powerless to react.

REMEMBERING 22 April 2022 : Euroviews. Why Marine Le Pen’s environmental agenda is greenwashing

 

Euroviews. Why Marine Le Pen’s environmental agenda is greenwashing

By Laurent Hubert and Jean-Noël Geist

Published on 22 April 2022 - 17:15 GMT+2

https://www.euronews.com/2022/04/22/why-marine-le-pen-s-environmental-agenda-is-greenwashing

 

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

With just a few days to go before the final round of the presidential elections in France, do the two finalists, Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, have proposals that adequately address and tackle the climate crisis?

The Shift Project is a French thinktank advocating for the shift to a post-carbon economy. As a non-profit organisation committed to scientific objectivity, it is dedicated to informing and influencing the debate on the energy transition in Europe. Here, the coordinator for European Affairs, Laurent Hubert, analyses far right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen's environmental agenda.

With just a few days to go before the final round of the presidential elections in France, do the two finalists, Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, have proposals that adequately address and tackle the climate crisis?

It’s the question we are all asking ourselves. And, in short, the answer is no.

So let’s focus on far right candidate Le Pen and analyse whether there is any substance behind her green pledges.

As climate concerns grow more and more important on France’s political scene, Le Pen has had to strengthen her ecological agenda - in comparison with her position in 2012 and 2017.

She claims to support climate neutrality by 2050 in France. But there are a whole host of shortcomings, inconsistencies and key measures missing from her programme, which fails to provide a credible and feasible national decarbonisation strategy.

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What is Marine Le Pen’s take on energy?

Le Pen’s key climate and energy proposal relies on the production increase of low-carbon electricity, which aims to reach 940 TWh by 2050. So in simple terms, that’s 65 per cent more than today.

Nuclear power is the cornerstone of this strategy.

It all depends on the launch of five pairs of nuclear reactors (réacteurs pressurisé européen or EPRs) from 2031 and another five by 2036, which would increase the lifespan of nuclear plants to 60 years.

Although low-carbon electricity from nuclear energy is an asset to France’s electricity mix, Le Pen’s plan reveals two stark shortcomings.

First, it doesn’t take into account short-term actions needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy production, such as decarbonising the current electricity mix.

What’s worse, she is actively discouraging renewable energy development. She wants to prevent the wind energy sector from advancing further by dampening all public support for it - and even dismantle existing wind turbines in the process. The major players in the renewable sector (EDF, GIFEN, SFEN, CEA) have publicly stated that if Le Pen becomes president, industrial capacities will be extremely limited by 2050.

She wants to prevent the wind energy sector from advancing further - and even dismantle existing wind turbines in the process.

When it comes to any sort of industrial strategy or how to treat skilled workers in the energy field, she doesn’t even mention this and it’s a glaring gap for us all to see.

Beyond electricity, Le Pen is also calling for a ‘hydrogen revolution’ for sectors having trouble with electrification. But she fails to explain its feasibility in terms of infrastructure, an industrial roadmap, jobs and skills, research or innovation.

At the same time, her plan to reduce taxes on fossil fuels, considered a “social aberration”, could provoke an increase in the fuels’ consumption. This would be dangerous as it would be a direct contradiction of both her decarbonisation plan, plans to wean off Russian oil and her supposed gas consumption reduction objectives.

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French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen waves to supporters during a campaign rally in Aras, northern France. Francois Mori/Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Does Le Pen have a plan for industry and greener buildings?

Le Pen plans to “relocalise” France’s industry and to double its GDP share compared to today - up to 20 per cent by 2050. She says this is in order to reduce France’s “imported emissions'' and its reliance on foreign economies.

Le Pen's plan to reduce taxes on fossil fuels is considered a “social aberration”.

So industrial processes would be decarbonised thanks to the development of the hydrogen sector. But at the same time, a massive renovation plan for buildings is proposed, prioritising the installation of heat pumps, “subject to the creation of a French industry”.

Although these measures could have a positive impact on France’s overall carbon footprint, Le Pen’s programme fails to clarify what the strategy is. She doesn’t set any targets or provide an impact assessment in order to achieve such ambitious objectives - so it comes across as simply hot air.

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What about her plan for the transport sector?

Transport represents 31 per cent of France’s emissions overall, so it’s a significant sector to address on a presidential environmental agenda.

Le Pen wants to preserve the use of individual cars in mobility. She intends to “slow down” the substitution of fossil fuel cars with their electric counterparts, by developing hybrids and biofuels, as well as hydrogen vehicles.

Le Pen wants to preserve the use of individual cars in mobility.

However, authorising hybrid vehicles without mentioning a time limit seems incompatible with the phase-out of fossil fuels, unless you dedicate a substantial amount of land to the production of biofuels. 

And in the absence of reduction objectives for car use, vehicle size and fleet size or the development of adequate decarbonised hydrogen production capacities - used for industry, aviation and road freight - this appears extremely ambitious.

Le Pen has mentioned that she wants to make “everyday trains” a priority but, again, without explaining the idea (except when it comes to young people, who would benefit from free travel during off-peak hours). At the same time, she is in favour of lowering road charges, which conflicts with the objective of a shift towards rail…so it’s all very confusing.

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Paris, France Canva

Is her environmental programme up to scratch?

Le Pen’s programme is greener than ever. Nevertheless, beyond the buzzwords, her proposals fail to provide any concrete strategy to achieve the policies and fail to give any target for emission reductions - nor public governance to monitor the process.

Many crucial elements to the green transition are not adequately addressed, such as land use (forestry and the sea are mentioned as “major national priorities'' without any target nor roadmap), waste management, circular economy or the supply chain of raw materials for low and zero emissions technologies.

And even more worryingly, important aspects of the economy are not mentioned at all, like the emissions resulting from agriculture or education and training for the jobs of tomorrow, as well as the question of upskilling workers.

Finally, while Le Pen is betting on breakthrough technologies for a sustainable and resource-efficient economy, she never refers to the existing processes which allow for emission reductions already. For example, energy saving and efficiency policies.

Although Le Pen’s ecological programme is ‘greener’ than her previous ones, should she be elected, it will fail.

So, two points appear crystal clear. Although Le Pen’s ecological programme is ‘greener’ than her previous ones, should she be elected, it will fail.

She will not be able to meet France’s climate objectives under the Paris Agreement.

As for Macron’s own green agenda, it’s definitely preferable, though largely insufficient. Now, the question is, what will happen to the climate if Le Pen makes it into office? The future looks grim from the outset.

 

Has Marine le Pen changed her position concerning climate change?

 

Has Marine le Pen changed her position concerning climate change?

Marine Le Pen and her party, the National Rally (RN), have shifted away from outright dodging or dismissing environmental issues, moving instead toward a strategy of acknowledging climate change while fiercely opposing international transition policies, EU green targets, and what they term "punitive ecology".

Evolution of Position

• Early-to-Mid Strategy (Dodging and Skepticism): Historically, the far-right movement in France largely avoided deep engagement with climate change, and various figures within Le Pen's party questioned the primary role of human activity or characterized climate concerns as secondary.
• The 2022 Presidential Campaign (A Greener Rebrand): Entering the 2022 race against Emmanuel Macron, Le Pen explicitly stated, "I have never been a climate sceptic," attempting to broaden her appeal. Her program shifted toward "economic patriotism," localizing supply chains to cut emissions from international trade, expanding nuclear energy, and dismantling existing wind turbines, which she labeled an economic and ecological absurdity. Critics, however, frequently dismissed these moves as greenwashing.
• Post-2022 Hardening and "Adaptation" Rhetoric (2023–2026): Following the 2022 election, Le Pen and her party hardened their stance against international frameworks like the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which she described as "alarmist," and opposed the EU Green Deal. During severe summer heatwaves and record-breaking temperatures through 2026, Le Pen pivoted toward emphasizing adaptation rather than drastic emission-cutting interventions, arguing that society must learn to live with and adapt to climate shifts rather than imposing costly constraints on ordinary workers, farmers, and households.

Core Tenets of the Current Approach

• Opposition to EU Green Targets: The RN continues to campaign against EU-level carbon-neutrality mandates and strict carbon-reduction timelines, framing them as destructive to national sovereignty and household purchasing power.
• Pro-Nuclear Energy: Le Pen consistently champions domestic nuclear power and low-carbon electricity generation as the primary solution for energy independence, paired with a rejection of wind and solar reliance.
• Anti-"Punitive Ecology": Her messaging rejects taxes, carbon pricing mechanisms, and lifestyle restrictions placed on consumers, instead proposing measures like local production incentives and practical cooling/infrastructure adjustments for extreme weather events.

You can read more about the political context and policy debates surrounding French climate strategy on Politico Europe or through coverage on The Guardian.

 

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