The independent government committee charged with preparing the UK for climate change has warned the government that the country isn’t ready for the 2°C global temperature rise predicted to take place by 2050.
The Climate Change Committee sets targets for the reduction of carbon emissions in the UK, and comprises of a cross-party selection of legislators and climate academics. It says that the UK is not yet adapted to current levels of global warming, and calls for “clear long-term objectives” to prevent negative effects from further temperature rises.
The Committee released a report in April this year stating that measures taken by the UK to cope with rising temperatures were stalling, were too slow, or “heading in the wrong direction.” The report’s executive summary reads, “planning for adaptation [to rising temperatures] continues to be piecemeal and disjointed.”
Despite the increasing presence of extreme weather in the UK (October 2022 to March 2024 was the wettest 18-months on record, for example), adaptation to changing conditions remains woefully inadequate, the Committee says. The CCC calls for coordinated action throughout government policies, affecting and influencing spending decisions and government departments’ activities to reverse the current trend of poor adaptation.
In its 2024 report to Parliament, it stated that it “did not find evidence to score a single outcome as ‘good’”, in assessment of measures taken as part of NAP3 (the UK’s Third National Adaptation Programme).
The latest warning from the CCC came in the form of a letter addressed to the government, days after the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed there had been a record rise in CO2 in the world’s atmosphere in 2024, and that concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide (persistent greenhouse gases) were also at record levels.
Henceforth, the Climate Change Committee will set objectives for adaptation strategies every five years, and wants to hold individual government departments accountable for delivering promised goals. The Committee said it would provide details on potential “trade-offs” in Q2 2026, a policy focus that has previously been criticised by campaigners as encouraging the hitting of targets rather than of meaningful climate action.
The existing effects of temperature rises were referenced in the CCC’s April 2025 report, with preliminary findings from the UK Department for Education that stated 1.7 days were lost from students’ learning time in 2024 due to “extreme overheating.”
Speaking to BBC Radio Four’s Today programme, Baroness Brown, chairperson of the adaptation committee for the CCC said: “Adaptation in the UK is not keeping up with the increase in climate risk. The impacts on the UK are getting worse, and [the UK government] needs more ambition.”
Two years ago, the CCC’s Report to Parliament pegged global temperature rises as likely to be around 2-3°C above pre-industrial levels, by 2100. In its letter to the government, it states the UK should be prepared to cope with the extremes of weather resulting from at least 2°C by 2050.
To provide context, climate campaigner David Wallace-Wells, speaking to NPR in 2019, said: “If we get to two degrees [global temperature rise] […] the air pollution effects alone would kill an additional 150 million people beyond what the air pollution at 1.5 degrees would would cost. That is our best-case scenario.”
