No matter what poverty line you choose, the share of the global population below it has declined

In 2015, countries worldwide signed the Paris Agreement, aiming to keep the global temperature rise “well below 2°C” and to limit it to 1.5°C.

To meet these targets, there are limits to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) that can be emitted. These are called carbon budgets. Every year we emit more CO₂, these budgets shrink.

In the chart, you can see estimates for how much CO₂ the world can emit while staying below different levels of warming. This is based on a 50% likelihood of staying below it; if we wanted to guarantee we wouldn’t exceed these temperatures, our budget would be much smaller.

For perspective, we’ve compared each budget with the projected amount of CO₂ that the world is expected to emit in 2026. This tells us how many years we have left if emissions stay at their current levels.

At current emission rates, the 1.5°C budget would run out around 2030. It seems implausible that global emissions will fall quickly enough to avoid this.

The 2°C budget would last until mid-century. By taking action on climate change, we buy ourselves more time and can avoid this level of warming.

Global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuels are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026. This is based on the latest preliminary estimates from the Global Carbon Project, published today.

This is a small reduction within an overall upward trend. Emissions have grown more slowly over the past decade than in previous decades, but they have not yet peaked or begun a consistent decline.

This fall mostly came from a reduction in oil consumption and a small decline in gas. Coal use increased slightly.

Among the major emitters, emissions are projected to fall in China, the United States, the European Union, and Japan. But they’re expected to increase by around 4% in India.

Why did emissions fall? The authors cite three key factors.

The deployment of clean energy (particularly solar and wind) displaced some fossil fuel use that would have otherwise been required to meet growing energy demand. Electric vehicles also reduced oil demand. Finally, the war in Iran and its impact on oil prices led to reduced demand, which has inadvertently reduced emissions.

Emissions from land-use change are more uncertain but are projected to increase this year due to peat fires and forest degradation in Southeast Asia.

Outside China, the world’s use of coal has barely changed since the late 1980s. It was just over 20,000 terawatt-hours back then, and almost four decades later, it is still the same.

But the change has been very different in China. The country has increased the use of coal enormously, and today, China is burning more coal than the rest of the world combined.

The future of global coal use, and the emissions that come with it, depends heavily on what happens in China.

In Chile, the annual number of cancer deaths as a share of the total population has been rising for decades. From this, it would be easy to assume that cancer is getting worse. But the chances of dying from cancer at most ages are lower than they used to be. The missing piece is that the country’s population is changing quickly, and older people now make up a much larger share.

That’s what the chart shows. The crude cancer death rate, in red, counts registered cancer deaths per 100,000 people of all ages. This metric has been going up, reflecting the fact that cancer risks increase steeply with age, and the population has grown much older.

The blue line, by contrast, shows the age-adjusted rate. This metric removes the effect of aging by holding the age structure constant.

This line has been falling for decades, which means that Chileans at almost every age are now less likely to die from cancer than people of the same age were in the past.

The pattern we see in Chile is happening in many other countries, too, and is visible in the global estimates.

The share of electricity produced by solar and wind in Poland more than doubled in just four years. In 2021, these renewable sources produced just 11% of its power; by 2025, this had risen to 25%.

You can see this growth in the chart, based on electricity data from Ember.

Solar and wind output, combined, grew very little in 2025, due to weak wind conditions. Solar output continued to grow, but it was barely enough to offset the decline in wind power.

Poland still has one of the most coal-intensive electricity mixes in Europe, with coal producing 50% of its power. The country has committed to moving away from it in the next few decades; growth in solar and wind generation will play a key role in this.

One in four people in the world is younger than 15. Just one in ten is 65 or older.

But there are huge differences in this distribution across countries. In the chart, I’ve shown these global figures alongside the country with the largest share of children, the Central African Republic, and the one with the largest share of older people, Japan.

In the Central African Republic, half of the population is under 15. Being over 65 is pretty rare: just 2% of the population.

Japan is the opposite. Being a child or adolescent puts you in the minority. Almost one-third of the population is 65 and older, and that share is growing quickly.

These differences in age distribution matter a lot for a country’s infrastructure, socioeconomic conditions, and public spending — from pensions and healthcare to childcare and education.

The chart shows the relationship between GDP (gross domestic product) per capita — a measure of average incomes in a country — and people’s living conditions.

Where GDP per capita is higher, living conditions are far better in many ways. Where average incomes are higher, children die less often, fewer of them are born dead, mothers die less often, fewer children suffer from hunger, doctors can focus on fewer patients, people live longer, more people can read, children have better access to education and better learning outcomes, more people have access to electricity and clean drinking water, and people are happier with their lives.

The disparity between countries with a low and a high GDP per capita is enormous. Looking at the first panel, for example, you can see that a child born in one of the poorest countries is more than 20 times as likely to die as a child born in one of the richest.