If we demand large-scale, effective programs from leaders in business and government, there’s still a path forward — but the longer we dilly dally, the more costly and tragic the consequences will be.

This isn’t alarmism. It’s about scale. If we’re serious about minimizing damage and building anything resembling resilience, we can’t afford to waste another minute on halfway measures.

Incremental policy isn’t going to get us where we need to go. It’s time to stop treating this like a distant risk and start treating it like a structural emergency — one that requires deep shifts in how we generate energy, move capital, and define growth.

As a new scientific study makes clear, we’re facing $28 trillion in heat-driven damages, directly tied to fossil fuel emissions.

That’s not theoretical. That’s the cost of inaction.

So the question isn’t “can we still stay below 1.5°C?” The question is: what now?

This isn’t just about climate targets slipping out of reach. It’s about what is already happening to the Earth as its ice sheets and glaciers melt, oceans acidify and overheat, coral reefs die, droughts worsen, crops fail, and storms intensify.

Keeping average global surface temperature from rising more than 1.5°C was an ambitious goal, given that atmospheric concentrations of global greenhouse gases have been rising relentlessly. Now we seem fated to pass that 1.5°C milestone.