As global leaders convene in the Brazilian Amazon for the 30th UN Climate Change Conference, it is crucial to assess our collective progress in cutting global greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite three decades 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 IPCC, which verified the threat of human-caused global warming. While researchers work on the upcoming IPCC report, they do so knowing that scientific findings remains eclipsed by political agendas. Despite well-intentioned efforts, the world is still dangerously off track to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Latest figures indicate that CO2 concentrations reached a record high of 423.9 ppm in the year 2024, with the growth rate from the previous year jumping by the biggest annual rise since record-keeping started in the late 1950s. According to the Global Carbon Project, ninety percent of worldwide carbon dioxide output in last year originated from burning fossil fuels, while the other tenth resulted from alterations in land use such as forest clearance and forest fires.
Although the increase in carbon emissions from fuels in 2024 was propelled by higher use of gas and oil—representing over half of worldwide discharges—coal burning also reached a historic peak, making up forty-one percent. Despite Cop28’s global stocktake calling for nations to transition away from carbon fuels, global strategies still aim to extract over twice the quantity of fossil fuels in 2030 than is consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, with ongoing drilling of natural gas rationalized as a lower emission transition fuel.
Rather than focusing on economic incentives to accelerate the phase-out of carbon fuels, environmental strategies are heavily reliant on feel-good eco-positive approaches that aim to neutralize carbon emissions by afforestation rather than cutting industrial emissions. Although protecting, expanding, and restoring natural carbon sinks like woodlands and wetlands is beneficial in itself, studies has shown that there is not enough land to achieve the worldwide target of net zero emissions using ecological methods by themselves.
Roughly 1 billion hectares—an area bigger than the USA—is required to fulfill carbon neutrality commitments. Over 40% of this land would need to be converted from existing uses like agriculture to carbon sequestration projects by the year 2060 at an never-before-seen pace.
Although this regenerative utopia could be realized, forests take time to mature and are susceptible to fires, so they should not be viewed as a quick or permanent carbon storage solution, especially in a rapidly shifting environment. As severe temperatures and dryness affect more of the planet, these sincere attempts could literally go up in smoke.
Scientific evidence indicates that about half of the carbon dioxide released annually stays in the air, while the rest is taken up by seas and land ecosystems. With global heating, these natural carbon sinks are losing efficiency at capturing CO2, meaning that more carbon builds up in the air, intensifying climate change. Shifting the reduction responsibility onto the land sector effectively excuses the oil and gas sector from the urgency to reduce emissions in the near future.
Reaching carbon neutrality by mid-century requires CO2 extraction (CDR), which currently relies almost exclusively on terrestrial methods to absorb surplus CO2 from the air. Polluters can easily buy carbon credits to counterbalance their emissions and continue with business as usual. Meanwhile, the energy imbalance caused by the burning of fossil fuels keeps on further destabilise the global climate system. In effect, we are increasing our climate liability to our global account, leaving future generations with an unpayable liability.
To curb the magnitude and length of overshoot the global warming targets, the planet eventually needs to go well beyond the neutralising effect of net zero and begin to drawdown cumulative historical emissions to reach a carbon-negative state.
According to the most recent data from the Global Carbon Project, vegetation-based CDR is currently absorbing the equivalent of about five percent of annual fossil carbon dioxide emissions, while technology-based CDR represents only about a tiny fraction of the carbon released from carbon sources. More generous sector projections place it at around 0.1% of total global emissions. At the risk of sounding like a heretic, the political distortion of net zero is a deceptive gap that distracts from the scientific imperative to eradicate the primary cause of our warming world—carbon-based energy.
Although this scientific reality should dominate talks at Cop30, history suggests that gradual, cautious steps and deference to politics will win out. Vague statements of long-term goals will keep on delay the pressing requirement for definite short-term measures. Unless policymakers have the courage to implement carbon pricing to bring the era of fossil fuels to a definitive end, we are adding increasing amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere, compounding the physical catastrophe currently happening all around us.
The dilemma we face is simple: take real action to the evidence-based situation of our crisis or endure the results of this profound moral failure for generations ahead.
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