2026 Landmarks and Tipping Points
Disaster Diary
We are not keeping a Disaster Diary for 2026. There are 279 entries in the 2025 diary, evidence that climate breakdown is real for those who need it.
Instead we are noting major events that should concern us (good or bad) as they occur in 2026
February
The UK’s first geothermal power plant has been turned on, providing a completely new type of renewable electricity using hot water from underground.
China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have been either “flat or falling” for almost two years. This marks the “first time” annual emissions may have fallen at a “time when energy demand was rising”, it added. Emissions fell 0.3% during the year, driven by a fall in emissions “across nearly all major sectors”
Kevin Anderson (a participant in the National Emergency Briefing) examines the widening policy gap between the Paris Agreement and the actual emissions trajectories of so-called “developed” nations.
‘We face a stark choice: rapid and far-reaching social and technical change, or a delayed transition marked by increasingly chaotic, and potentially violent, social disruption as climate impacts accelerate. At the start of 2026, the window for making this choice is closing rapidly.’
January
There is a >99% chance (virtually certain) that 2026 will be hotter than every year on record prior to 2023 though only a 1% chance that it will break 2024’s record high temperature of 1.55 °C. 2026 is also set to be the 13th consecutive year in which temperatures reach at least 1.0 °C above pre-industrial levels, with a 12% chance of exceeding the 1.5 °C Paris Agreement target.
UK government publishes report on ecosystem collapse and national security
It says ‘Global ecosystem degradation and collapse threaten UK national security and prosperity and is likely to lead to geopolitical instability, economic insecurity, conflict, migration and increased inter-state competition for resources. Ecosystem degradation is occurring across all regions. Every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse.’
2025 has broken historical climate records, with provisional Met Office figures showing it has been both the warmest and sunniest year on record for the UK.
World oceans absorbed record heat in 2025 creating a priming condition for sea level rise, violent storms, and coral death.
National Emergency Briefing on climate & nature
On 27th November 2025, ten of the UK’s leading experts briefed an invited audience of over 1,200 politicians and leaders from business, culture, faith, sport and the media with the latest implications for health, food, national security and the economy.
The NEB is being turned into a powerful public-information film, The People’s Emergency Briefing. This will be screened in communities across the UK. Each screening will be followed by a public discussion. By taking the NEB into constituencies nationwide, the aim is to cut through misinformation, ground debate in shared evidence, and open up serious discussion about the solutions now required.
Greenwashed https://youtu.be/XjWUKFUaoL4?si=XkcgIc63666SZjXB
Featuring BBC-presenter and fearless activist, Chris Packham, and created by Mexican physician and environmentalist Sofia Pineda Ochoa, this film confronts existential ecological crises threatening our planet through the lens of a major yet uncomfortable truth — over population.