🔗 Share this article

While world leaders gather in Brazil for the 30th UN Climate Change Conference, it is crucial to assess our collective progress 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 released after the year 1990. Incidentally, 1990 was the release of the initial scientific evaluation by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which verified the danger of anthropogenic climate change. While researchers prepare the Seventh Assessment Report, they do so knowing that their work remains overshadowed by political agendas. Despite sincere attempts, the planet is still far from the path to prevent dangerous global warming.

Unprecedented CO₂ Levels and Fossil Fuel Dependency

Latest figures show that CO₂ concentrations reached a record high of 423.9 ppm in the year 2024, with the growth rate from 2023 to 2024 jumping by the biggest annual rise since record-keeping started in 1957. Based on the Global Carbon Project, ninety percent of worldwide carbon dioxide output in last year came from burning fossil fuels, while the remaining 10% was due to alterations in land use such as forest clearance and wildfires.

Although the rise in fossil CO₂ emissions in recent times was driven by increased use of natural gas and petroleum—representing over half of global emissions—coal burning also attained a historic peak, making up forty-one percent. In spite of the previous climate summit's evaluation calling for nations to transition away from carbon fuels, collective plans still intend to produce more than double 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 justified as a less polluting bridge fuel.

The Illusion of Eco-Friendly Measures

Rather than focusing on financial motivators to accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels, environmental strategies are heavily reliant on feel-good nature positive approaches that seek to cancel out CO2 output by planting trees rather than reducing factory discharges. Although conserving, expanding, and restoring ecological absorbers like forests and marshes is beneficial in itself, studies has demonstrated that there is insufficient territory to achieve the global goal of net zero emissions using nature-based solutions by themselves.

Roughly one billion hectares—an area bigger than the United States of America—is required to meet net zero pledges. More than forty percent of this area would need to be converted from current applications like agriculture to carbon capture initiatives by 2060 at an unprecedented rate.

Although this ideal restoration could be realized, woodlands require years to grow and can burn down, so they cannot be considered as a quick or permanent CO2 retention method, particularly in a fast-changing environment. As extreme heat and aridity affect more of the planet, these well-intentioned efforts could literally be destroyed by fire.

The Diminishing of Planetary Absorbers

Research data indicates that about 50% of the total CO₂ emitted each year remains in the atmosphere, while the remainder is absorbed by seas and land ecosystems. As the planet warms, these environmental absorbers are losing efficiency at soaking up CO₂, which means that more carbon accumulates in the air, further exacerbating climate change. Shifting the mitigation burden onto the land sector effectively excuses the oil and gas sector from the urgency to cut pollution any time soon.

The Climate Liability and Future Generations

Reaching carbon neutrality by mid-century demands CO2 extraction (CDR), which at present relies almost exclusively on terrestrial methods to absorb surplus CO2 from the atmosphere. Polluters can simply purchase offsets to counterbalance their discharges and proceed with business as usual. Meanwhile, the energy imbalance resulting from the burning of fossil fuels continues to further disrupt the global climate system. Essentially, we are increasing our climate liability to our global account, passing on future generations with an insurmountable burden.

To limit the magnitude and duration of exceeding the Paris Agreement temperature goals, the world eventually needs to surpass the neutralising effect of net zero and begin to drawdown past carbon outputs to achieve a carbon-negative state.

The Policy Misrepresentation of Net Zero

According to the latest numbers from the Global Carbon Project, plant-based carbon removal is currently absorbing the equivalent of about 5% of yearly CO2 from fuels, while engineered carbon extraction accounts for only about a tiny fraction of the carbon released from carbon sources. More generous industry estimates suggest around 0.1% of total global emissions. At the risk of sounding like a heretic, the policy twisting of carbon neutrality is an insidious loophole that takes focus away from the scientific imperative to eliminate the primary cause of our warming world—carbon-based energy.

The Critical Requirement for Definite Steps

While this scientific reality should lead talks at the climate summit, past events suggests that gradual, cautious steps and deference to politics will prevail. Ambiguous promises of future ambition will keep on delay the urgent need for concrete immediate action. Unless policymakers are brave enough to implement carbon pricing to bring the era of fossil fuels to a definitive end, we are releasing more and more carbon to the atmosphere, worsening the physical catastrophe currently happening across the globe.

The challenge we face is straightforward: genuinely respond to the evidence-based situation of our predicament or suffer the consequences of this deep ethical lapse for centuries to come.