> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.dailyferment.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # We will overshoot 1.5°C. Can a missed target still do its job? - URL: https://www.dailyferment.com/missed-target-1-5c-overshoot-open-letter/ - Published: 2026-10-22T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-22T16:00:00.000Z - Description: UNEP now plans to overshoot 1.5°C and come back by 2100. The UK's inflation letters show what a missed target needs to keep meaning something. - Author: Rana Bilal Zafar - Tags: Science & Health, Economy, #reframe On Wednesday, 21 October, UNEP published its Emissions Gap Report and said the chance of holding warming below 1.5°C "with no or limited overshoot is gone." That same morning the UK's statistics office said consumer prices were up 3.5% on a year earlier, against a target of 2%. Two targets, both missed, announced within hours of each other. One of them has a routine for being missed. The other is only now getting one. So the question I kept turning over: does a target you already know you will miss still mean anything, and if so, what keeps it meaning something? ## Is 1.5°C dead? My first reaction was yes. If the people who measure the gap say you can't stay under the line, the honest move is to stop pointing at the line and talk about 2°C instead. That isn't what UNEP did, and reading the key messages slowly changed my mind about what had happened. The report doesn't drop 1.5°C. It turns it into a round trip. Its "lowest possible" path lets warming peak at 1.7 to 1.8°C around the middle of the century, then brings it back to 1.5°C or below by 2100\. It even prints the odds: a 66% chance of holding the peak there, a 50% chance of getting back by 2100. The target stopped being a ceiling and became a return address. **1.7 to 1.8°C**lowest possible peak, mid-century (66% chance) **2100**back to 1.5°C or below (50% chance) **320 Gt**CO2 to remove and store this century **2.8°C**by 2100 if current policies continue Source: UNEP, Emissions Gap Report 2026, Key Messages. Guess first: to stay on that path, by how much must global emissions fall by 2035, against 2025? **45%.** If every country delivers its current pledge, the fall is 11 to 15%. By 2030 the path needs 18%; pledges give 5 to 8%. Source: UNEP, Emissions Gap Report 2026, Key Messages. To get onto that path, global greenhouse gas emissions would have to fall 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035 and 69% by 2040, all against 2025 levels. Full delivery of every country's current pledge gets 5 to 8% by 2030 and 11 to 15% by 2035\. Current policies point to 2.8°C by 2100, "and increase thereafter." ![Bars: emissions cuts against 2025 levels. The lowest 1.5°C overshoot path needs 18% by 2030 and 45% by 2035; every current national pledge delivered gives 5 to 8% and 11 to 15%. Side note: peak 1.7 to 1.8°C mid-century, back to 1.5°C by 2100 at 50% odds, with about 320 Gt of CO2 removed](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d7/b7/d7b77195-48c5-45ab-8688-51750879d1d6/content/images/2026/10/df68-return-path.png) What the return trip needs against what pledges deliver. Source: UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2026, Key Messages. ## Which targets already live with being missed? Inflation targets do, and they have a rule for it. ![The front of the Bank of England in the City of London, with the Royal Exchange columns at right](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d7/b7/d7b77195-48c5-45ab-8688-51750879d1d6/content/images/2026/10/df68-bank-of-england.jpg) The Bank of England, London. Photo by [Sue Winston](https://unsplash.com/@winniepix?ref=dailyferment.com) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/the-bank-of-england-building-is-visible-eWgVnKNJfeI?ref=dailyferment.com) The UK's remit for the Bank of England sets the target at 2%. If inflation moves more than one percentage point away from it in either direction, the Governor has to write an open letter to the Chancellor. The remit lists what goes in it: why inflation moved, what the Bank is doing about it, "the horizon over which the Committee judges it is appropriate to return inflation to the target," and the trade-off it is making with output. If inflation is still more than a point out three months later, he writes again. At 3.5% in September, inflation is 1.5 points over. The last letter went out on 17 September, after August's 3.1%. Reading the remit, another one falls due in December unless prices drop fast. That's my reading of the three-month rule, not an announcement. What I like about this is that nobody pretends the target was hit, and nobody abandons it either. The miss gets a size, a cause and a way back, in writing, on a timetable. Two targets, both missed #### UK inflation target - *Target* 2% CPI - *When the miss must be explained* more than 1 point away, either direction - *Who explains* the Governor, in an open letter to the Chancellor - *What must be said* why, what the Bank is doing, the horizon for getting back, the trade-off - *How often* again after three months if still out - *Latest return date given* "the medium term" (September 2026 letter) #### Paris 1.5°C goal - *Target* well below 2°C, pursue 1.5°C - *When the miss must be explained* no automatic trigger - *Who explains* no one body; UNEP assesses each year - *What must be said* collective progress, at the global stocktake - *How often* stocktake every five years - *Latest return date given* by 2100, 50% chance (UNEP scenario) Sources: MPC remit (Nov 2024); Governor's letter, 17 Sep 2026; Paris Agreement Arts. 2, 14, 15; UNEP EGR 2026 Key Messages. ## Does the letter actually name a date? This is where my neat comparison wobbled. I went to the September letter expecting the return horizon in plain numbers. It has a projection for the way up: inflation rising to "around 3¾% in 2026 Q4 and slightly above 4% in early 2027." It names the cause: the conflict in the Middle East that began at the end of February, and the energy prices that came with it. For the way back it says monetary policy "will ensure that CPI inflation returns to the 2% target sustainably in the medium term." No quarter, no year. So the mechanism built for missed targets lets the return date go soft too. Next to it, UNEP's round trip looks almost blunt: a peak of 1.7 to 1.8°C, a date of 2100, odds of 50%. But the blunt numbers sit on one soft one. The return trip needs roughly 320 gigatonnes of CO2 taken out of the air and stored for good over this century, about eight years of 2024's emissions. UNEP's own words on that: "the chances of achieving this uncertain." The way back leans on removals that UNEP itself won't promise. And the comparison has a limit I shouldn't skip. The Bank of England controls an interest rate. Nobody controls global emissions. A Governor can be asked "what are you doing about it?" and point to one lever. The Paris Agreement's answer to that question is spread across nearly every government on earth, checked through a global stocktake every five years and a compliance committee that the treaty says must be "non-adversarial and non-punitive." Nobody has to write the letter. ## What does a missed target still do? Here is where I've landed for now. A target you know you'll miss is not automatically a slogan. The whole open letter rule rests on that bet: that a missed target, explained in public, is still worth keeping, and that the explaining is what keeps it. What turns a missed target into a slogan is dropping one of three things: how far over you are, when you expect to be back, and how sure you are of that. UNEP has now put all three on the table for 1.5°C. The Bank's last letter was firm on the first and vague on the second. Each has the part the other lacks: the Bank has someone who must write, on a schedule; UNEP has a date and the odds, and nobody who must answer for them. I wrote about the opposite failure a few days ago, a [deadline that moves every year until the best-advised people stop believing it](https://www.dailyferment.com/deadline-extensions-teach-people-to-wait/). That was a target moved quietly. This is a target kept loudly. I suspect the second can still work. I'm less sure it works without someone whose job is to explain the gap, every few months, in public. The claim, in one sentence A target you already know you will miss keeps working only while someone has to say, on a schedule, how far over it you are, when you come back and how sure they are of that. Established The UNEP figures (from the report's key messages), the Paris Agreement text, the UK remit and the 3.5% CPI number. Inferred That the open letter routine is part of what keeps the 2% target believable. I haven't opened inflation expectations data to test it. Guess That a climate version of the letter, a named body that must explain each year's gap and the return date, would change what governments do. ## Sources - UNEP, Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return, Key Messages (October 2026): [https://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/50037](https://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/50037?ref=dailyferment.com) - UNRIC summary, 21 October 2026: [https://unric.org/en/unep-emissions-gap-report-2026-1-5-degree-overshoot/](https://unric.org/en/unep-emissions-gap-report-2026-1-5-degree-overshoot/?ref=dailyferment.com) - Paris Agreement (2015), Articles 2, 14 and 15: [https://cil.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2015-Paris-Agreement.pdf](https://cil.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2015-Paris-Agreement.pdf?ref=dailyferment.com) - ONS, Consumer price inflation, UK: September 2026 (21 October 2026): [https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/september2026](https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/september2026?ref=dailyferment.com) - Remit for the Monetary Policy Committee (November 2024): [https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/letter/2024/mpc-letter-remit-2024.pdf](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/letter/2024/mpc-letter-remit-2024.pdf?ref=dailyferment.com) - Open letters between HM Treasury and the Bank of England, September 2026: [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-letters-between-hm-treasury-and-bank-of-england-september-2026](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-letters-between-hm-treasury-and-bank-of-england-september-2026?ref=dailyferment.com)