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While world leaders assemble in Brazil for the 30th UN Climate Change Conference, it is essential to assess how we are faring together in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.

In spite of 30 years of UN climate summits, approximately half of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the atmosphere after the dawn of industrialization has been emitted after the year 1990. Incidentally, 1990 was the release of the First Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which verified the threat of anthropogenic climate change. As scientists work on the Seventh Assessment Report, they do so knowing that scientific findings remains eclipsed by political influences. Regardless of well-intentioned efforts, the world is remains far from the path to avert catastrophic climate change.

Record-Breaking CO₂ Levels and Fossil Fuel Dependency

Latest figures show that CO₂ concentrations hit a new peak of 423.9 parts per million in the year 2024, with the growth rate from 2023 to 2024 jumping by the biggest annual rise since modern measurements began in the late 1950s. According to the international carbon monitoring initiative, 90% of worldwide carbon dioxide output in 2024 originated from burning fossil fuels, while the other tenth resulted from land-use changes such as deforestation and forest fires.

Although the rise in fossil CO₂ emissions in 2024 was driven by increased use of gas and oil—representing over half of global emissions—coal burning also reached a historic peak, making up 41%. Despite Cop28’s global stocktake urging nations to move beyond fossil fuels, global strategies still aim to extract over twice the quantity of hydrocarbons in 2030 than aligns with keeping planet heating to 1.5C, with continued extraction of natural gas justified as a lower emission bridge fuel.

The Mirage of Nature-Based Solutions

Rather than concentrating on financial motivators to accelerate the elimination of carbon fuels, environmental strategies are heavily reliant on feel-good nature positive approaches that seek to cancel out carbon emissions by afforestation instead of cutting factory discharges. Although protecting, expanding, and rehabilitating ecological absorbers like forests and wetlands is beneficial in itself, studies has demonstrated that there is not enough land to achieve the worldwide target of net zero emissions using nature-based solutions by themselves.

Roughly 1 billion hectares—an area larger than the United States of America—is required to fulfill net zero pledges. Over forty percent of this area would need to be transformed from current applications like agriculture to carbon capture initiatives by the year 2060 at an unprecedented rate.

Even if this ideal restoration could be achieved, forests require years to grow and are susceptible to fires, so they should not be viewed as a fast or lasting carbon storage solution, particularly in a fast-changing environment. While severe temperatures and aridity engulf larger regions, these sincere attempts could actually be destroyed by fire.

The Diminishing of Natural Carbon Sinks

Scientific evidence tells us that about 50% of the carbon dioxide released annually stays in the air, while the rest is taken up by oceans and terrestrial systems. With global heating, these environmental absorbers are becoming less effective at capturing CO₂, which means that more carbon accumulates in the atmosphere, intensifying climate change. Shifting the reduction responsibility onto the agricultural and forest sectors effectively excuses the oil and gas sector from the urgency to reduce emissions any time soon.

The Climate Liability and Future Generations

Reaching carbon neutrality by mid-century requires carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which at present relies almost exclusively on land-based measures to soak up surplus CO2 from the atmosphere. Polluters can easily purchase offsets to counterbalance their emissions and proceed with business as usual. At the same time, the planetary heat imbalance resulting from the combustion of hydrocarbons continues to further disrupt the Earth’s climate. Essentially, we are increasing our climate liability to our planetary credit card, passing on future generations with an insurmountable burden.

To curb the magnitude and duration of exceeding the Paris Agreement temperature goals, the planet eventually needs to go well beyond the neutralising effect of net zero and start to remove cumulative historical emissions to reach net negative emissions.

The Policy Misrepresentation of Net Zero

According to the most recent data from the Global Carbon Project, vegetation-based CDR is presently capturing the equivalent of about 5% of yearly CO2 from fuels, while engineered carbon extraction accounts for only about one-millionth of the CO2 emitted from carbon sources. Optimistic sector projections suggest around 0.1% of worldwide CO2 output. At the risk of sounding like a heretic, the policy twisting of net zero is an insidious loophole that takes focus away from the scientific imperative to eliminate the main source of our warming world—carbon-based energy.

The Critical Requirement for Concrete Action

While this scientific reality should lead discussions at Cop30, history indicates that gradual, cautious steps and deference to politics will prevail. Ambiguous promises of future ambition will keep on postpone the urgent need for concrete immediate action. Until policymakers have the courage to put a price on carbon to bring the era of fossil fuels to a definitive end, we are releasing more and more carbon to the atmosphere, compounding the physical catastrophe now unfolding all around us.

The dilemma we face is simple: genuinely respond to the scientific reality of our predicament or suffer the consequences of this deep ethical lapse for generations ahead.