What If The Climate Fight Has Changed?

There's a question I suspect many people who care deeply about climate change are frightened to ask: what if we've already failed at part of the task? Not failed in the sense that humanity is doomed, or that there's nothing left worth saving, but failed at one version of the goal: acting quickly enough to avoid some of the damage we're beginning to experience.

Drought-stressed landscape in Brecon, South Wales. July 2026.

We're No Longer Choosing Climate Change vs No Change

The planet has already warmed substantially. Atmospheric CO₂ has reached concentrations unprecedented on human timescales, the oceans are absorbing enormous quantities of additional heat, glaciers are retreating, seas are rising and ecosystems are already responding to changing conditions. Some further damage is now unavoidable, whatever we do from here, and that's hard to accept [1].

What remains now is a continuum of possible futures: a world around +1.5°C warmer than the pre-industrial period, a +2°C world and beyond. Every fraction of warming brings greater risk.

2024 was likely the first calendar year to average more than +1.5°C above the 1850-1900 baseline, at approximately 1.55°C [2]. That doesn't mean the Paris Agreement's +1.5°C threshold was formally crossed. Climate scientists assess warming over longer periods before confirming the threshold has been exceeded, but what 2024 tells us is that individual years above 1.5°C are no longer hypothetical.

In 2025, human-induced warming reached around 1.37°C above the 1850-1900 average, with human-caused warming increasing at approximately 0.27°C per decade over 2016–2025 [3]. If this rate continued, we could reach +1.5°C around 2030, although there is uncertainty around precisely when that will happen [3].

2026 has brought repeated heatwaves and exceptional heat, with numerous climate records broken along the way. England experienced its warmest June on record, and for the first time the UK reached 35°C in May, June and July. By mid-July, we'd already experienced more days above 30°C than during the whole of 1976 [4], demonstrating that climate change is no longer something we experience only through global averages.

The Planet Is Accumulating Heat Faster

Earth is constantly receiving energy from the Sun and radiating energy back into space. When more energy arrives than leaves, the planet warms, and this difference is called Earth's energy imbalance. Satellite measurements show this imbalance has been increasing [3, 5].

There's also growing evidence that the rate of warming itself may be changing. A 2026 study in Geophysical Research Letters found statistically significant acceleration in global surface warming after adjusting for major sources of natural variability [6]. One explanation receiving increasing attention is the reduction in cooling aerosol pollution: the tiny particles from industrial and shipping emissions that historically reflected sunlight and altered clouds, masking some of the greenhouse warming happening underneath. As countries clean up air pollution for public-health reasons, that reflective shield is thinning, and some of the warming it was hiding is starting to show. James Hansen and colleagues argue that declining aerosol cooling has contributed significantly to recent warming acceleration, although the size of that effect remains uncertain [7].

We Could Reach 2°C Before 2050

Hansen and colleagues state in their 2023 paper Global Warming in the Pipeline that, under the current geopolitical approach to greenhouse-gas emissions, warming would exceed 2°C before 2050 [8]. Their estimate of climate sensitivity is higher than many mainstream assessments, so this shouldn't be presented as scientific consensus. But newer observational evidence, including satellite measurements of Earth's energy imbalance, means the possibility of faster warming can't simply be dismissed.

We don't know precisely when +2°C will be reached, but we do know that what happens to emissions from here will help determine the answer.

The Long-Term Future Is Not Predetermined

The UN Environment Programme's 2025 Emissions Gap Report estimates that policies currently in place put the world on course for around +2.8°C of warming over this century, while full implementation of current national climate pledges would reduce that to around +2.3 to +2.5°C [9]. This matters enormously.

A +2°C world would bring substantially greater risks, including more extreme heat, increasing pressure on food and water supplies, serious ecosystem losses and greater limits to adaptation [10]. But it would still remain preferable to +2.1°C or higher.

Missing one climate target does not make the next one meaningless.

There's No Point At Which Giving Up Makes Sense

There's no temperature at which further action becomes pointless, and no point at which the honest answer is to stop reducing emissions.

Climate denial says we don't need to cut emissions. Climate defeatism says there's no point cutting emissions. The reasoning is different, but the outcome is the same, and the atmosphere doesn't care which excuse we choose.

This Isn't The Fight We Wanted

We've already changed the planet, and people who contributed almost nothing to this problem will suffer disproportionately from it, for generations to come. I find that gut-wrenchingly sad. But sadness isn't the same as surrender.

We need governments to change policy, businesses to change investment, communities to change places, and individuals to help create the political and social conditions that make these changes possible. Multiply those decisions across businesses, cities, countries and decades, and the difference becomes enormous.

Nature Is Part Of The Climate Response Too

Cutting greenhouse-gas emissions remains essential because it determines how much additional warming we ultimately experience. But we also have to help nature, landscapes and communities cope with climate change that is already underway.

Healthy peatlands, functioning floodplains, resilient woodlands, wetlands, rivers, grasslands and soils cannot stop climate change. But restoring ecosystems appropriately can protect carbon stores, support biodiversity and, depending on the landscape and intervention, help reduce vulnerability to pressures including flooding, drought and heat [10].

Nature restoration isn't an alternative to cutting fossil-fuel emissions. We need both. And that's the same principle that applies at national scale, which brings the question closer to home.

Where Britain Fits

Britain cannot solve climate change alone, but that doesn't make what we do here irrelevant. Our influence is not measured solely by the emissions released within our borders. The choices Britain makes about energy, transport, finance, technology, infrastructure, food and land can influence markets, investment and policy elsewhere, and a country of our size has more leverage over that global trajectory than its population share would suggest.

We've already shown that leadership can travel. The Climate Change Act 2008 made Britain the first country to establish a long-term legally binding national framework for cutting carbon emissions [11]. We've also become one of the world's leading offshore wind markets. In January 2026, a record 8.4 GW of new offshore wind capacity was secured through the UK's latest auction, the largest offshore wind auction yet held in Europe [12].

Progress is not fast enough, and there is an enormous amount still to do, but achievements like this matter because they demonstrate that entire energy systems can change when policy, investment and technology move in the same direction.

The same principle applies to nature. Britain will not solve the climate crisis by restoring a peat bog, reconnecting a floodplain or bringing a meadow back to life. But those interventions can protect carbon, support biodiversity and help landscapes become more resilient to the changes already underway.

We Need To Stop Promising Everything Will Be OK

We haven't lost the climate fight. We've lost the version of it where nothing bad happens. Perhaps being honest about that is not defeatism at all.

What remains is not a binary choice between saving the world and losing it. It's a fight over how much warming happens, how much damage follows, how many people are exposed to it, how many ecosystems survive it and how much of the extraordinary living world we hand on to the generations that follow us. That fight is still entirely open. It's just no longer the one we wanted. It is still worth fighting for.

That means different things depending on where you sit. If you vote, it means treating climate policy as a decisive issue rather than a background one. If you invest or work in finance, it means asking where capital is actually flowing, not just what a portfolio claims to prioritise. If you're part of a business, it means pushing decisions on energy, supply chains and land use in the direction the science demands, even when it's inconvenient. And if none of that feels within reach right now, it means supporting the people and organisations doing the restoration work described above, because degraded landscapes don't recover on their own, and neither does public will. None of these changes are dramatic on their own. But sustained together, over decades, we can change our story.

References

1. World Meteorological Organization (2026). State of the Global Climate 2025. World Meteorological Organization. The report provides the latest global assessment of greenhouse-gas concentrations, global temperature, ocean heat, sea-level rise, glaciers and other indicators of the changing climate.

   
   

2. World Meteorological Organization (2025). State of the Global Climate 2024. World Meteorological Organization. WMO assessed 2024 as likely the first calendar year more than 1.5°C above the 1850–1900 average, with global mean near-surface temperature approximately 1.55 ± 0.13°C above that baseline. WMO stresses that a single calendar year above 1.5°C does not mean the Paris Agreement's long-term temperature threshold has been crossed.

   
   

3. Forster, P.M. et al. (2026). Indicators of Global Climate Change 2025: annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence. Earth System Science Data, 18, 3889–3933. Human-induced warming was estimated at 1.37°C above 1850–1900 in 2025, with an estimated warming rate of 0.27°C per decade during 2016–2025. DOI: 10.5194/essd-18-3889-2026.

   
   

4. Met Office (2026). Summer 2026 so far: A look at the season at the halfway point. Met Office, 16 July 2026. The Met Office reported that by 15 July, 2026 had already recorded more UK days above 30°C than the whole of 1976, had become the first year on record in which the UK reached 35°C in May, June and July, and that England had experienced its warmest June on record.

   
   

5. Chen, Y-T. et al. (2026). Assessing Earth's Energy Imbalance Trend in the Early 21st Century in Two High-Resolution Coupled Models. Geophysical Research Letters, 53, e2025GL121277. Satellite observations show an increasing top-of-atmosphere Earth energy imbalance of approximately 0.45 W m⁻² per decade over 2001–2024. DOI: 10.1029/2025GL121277.

   
   

6. Foster, G. & Rahmstorf, S. (2026). Global Warming Has Accelerated Significantly. Geophysical Research Letters, 53, e2025GL118804. The analysis finds statistically significant acceleration in global mean surface warming after adjustment for major sources of natural variability. DOI: 10.1029/2025GL118804.

   
   

7. Hansen, J.E. et al. (2025). Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed? Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 67(1), 6–44. The authors argue that declining aerosol cooling has contributed significantly to recent warming acceleration, while uncertainty remains around the magnitude of the effect. DOI: 10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494.

   
   

8. Hansen, J.E. et al. (2023). Global Warming in the Pipeline. Oxford Open Climate Change, 3(1), kgad008. The authors argue that under the current geopolitical approach to greenhouse-gas emissions, warming would exceed 2°C before 2050. DOI: 10.1093/oxfclm/kgad008.

   
   

9. United Nations Environment Programme (2025). Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off Target. UNEP. The report estimates warming of approximately 2.8°C under current policies and 2.3–2.5°C with full implementation of current Nationally Determined Contributions.

   
   

10. IPCC (2022). Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press. The assessment documents increasing risks to ecosystems, food and water security and limits to adaptation as warming increases, alongside the role of ecosystem protection and restoration in climate-resilient development. DOI: 10.1017/9781009325844.

    
    

11. Climate Change Committee. UK action on climate change. The Climate Change Committee states that the Climate Change Act 2008 made the UK the first country to establish a long-term legally binding framework to cut carbon emissions.

    
    

12. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (2026). Record breaking auction for offshore wind secured to take back control of Britain's energy. 14 January 2026. The UK's seventh allocation round secured 8.4 GW of offshore wind capacity. WindEurope described the round as Europe's largest offshore wind auction to date.