The United States’ “abandonment” of a crucial climate pledge has increased the odds that the world will warm more than previously estimated, according to a United Nations scientific report released Wednesday.
The U.N.’s annual Emissions Gap Report is considered a definitive assessment of global progress on climate change. It identified the United States as an outlier among the industrialized nations that are responsible for most planet-warming pollution.
Among the Group of 20 industrialized nations, the report noted, emissions overall had slowed down in 2025, “with the United States of America being the major exception.”
That came after a year of rising electricity demand from the rapid construction of data centers to serve artificial intelligence, as well as a cold North American winter that prompted more fossil fuel use for heating.
But the United States’ most consequential action, in terms of the global effect on climate change, has been to abandon its pledge to cut its emissions that was made in 2024 under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The Paris Agreement to fight climate change, which calls for holding temperature rise to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times, and preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, directed nations to update and strengthen such pledges every five years. These pledges are considered the building blocks toward reaching global goals to rein in warming.
But on the day he was inaugurated last year, President Trump announced that he would pull the United States out of the Paris agreement, withdrawing from the fight against climate change. In fact, his administration has encouraged more production and use of fossil fuels, the burning of which releases the greenhouse gases that are dangerously warming the planet.
If other countries follow through on their pledges, Earth would warm 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) this century compared with the preindustrial era. That estimate is 0.3 degrees Celsius (0.5 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than a comparable estimate made last year. “About half” of the increase stems from the subtraction of America’s climate pledge, the U.N. report said.
Scientists emphasize that every fraction of a degree of additional warming raises the likelihood of deadlier heat waves, more powerful storms and other extremes.
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said the United Nations was “pushing the woke Green Energy Scam, pressuring countries across the world to jeopardize their economic and national security in order to meet arbitrary climate goals.”
The U.N. report’s end-of-century warming projections are based on many assumptions, and reflect an America in which Trump-style climate policies continue long after the end of his term.
Without citing any nation, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres described a “leadership gap,” and said “governments must go much further and faster” on building out renewable energy and phasing out fossil fuels.
Inger Andersen, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said “we are seeing — and will continue to see — impacts on every nation on the planet, including the U.S.”
Even before Mr. Trump dismantled climate policies, the world was on pace to blow past the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Since returning to office in January 2025, President Trump has carried out what Climate Action Tracker, an independent research group, describes as the “most aggressive, comprehensive, and consequential rollback” it has ever analyzed. Under the Trump administration, the United States has withdrawn government support for wind and solar power, eliminated greenhouse gas emissions limits for fossil-fuel-burning plants, and scrapped the scientific determination that gives the government the authority to combat climate change.
“The Trump administration is trying to completely reverse the U.S.’s previous course, and that is being seen and felt at the global level,” said Finn Hossfeld, a policy analyst at the NewClimate Institute who tracks major emitters.
In the big picture, over the past 25 years, the greenhouse gas emissions from the United States have trended downward, while China’s have skyrocketed. China’s annual carbon emissions are now two-and-a-half times those of America’s, although they hit a plateau in 2025 as the country rapidly expanded wind and solar power.
Emissions from the United States are still projected to decrease, just not as fast as they would have if Mr. Trump had not erased climate policies. The report said that “recent policy changes” in America will lead to 0.9 gigatons of additional emissions by 2030, equivalent to the yearly total in Japan.
The report comes a month after the U.N. formally acknowledged failure in the global goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Since preindustrial times, global average temperatures have already risen 1.4 degrees Celsius.
Wednesday’s assessment looks at what it would take to make the “overshoot” of the 1.5-degree goal as small as possible while maintaining a chance to eventually reduce temperatures back toward 1.5 degrees by the end of the century.
It would require daunting changes, starting over the coming decade, with global emissions needing to decline 45 percent by 2035, an annual reduction of roughly 6 percent. By comparison, emissions fell roughly that amount in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic halted much human activity and drove many economies into deep recession.
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