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While world leaders assemble in Brazil for Cop30, it is vital to assess our collective progress in reducing worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases.

Despite three decades of UN climate summits, approximately half of the CO2 built up in the atmosphere after the dawn of industrialization has been emitted since 1990. Coincidentally, 1990 was the release of the First Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which confirmed the threat of human-caused global warming. As scientists work on the upcoming IPCC report, they do so knowing that scientific findings remains overshadowed by political influences. Despite sincere attempts, the planet is remains far from the path to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Unprecedented CO₂ Levels and Fossil Fuel Dependency

Recent data show that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reached a new peak of 423.9 parts per million in 2024, with the increase rate from 2023 to 2024 jumping by the largest yearly increase since record-keeping started in the late 1950s. Based on the Global Carbon Project, 90% of worldwide carbon dioxide output in 2024 originated from the combustion of carbon-based energy sources, while the other tenth resulted from land-use changes such as forest clearance and forest fires.

While the rise in fossil CO₂ emissions in recent times was driven by higher use of gas and oil—accounting for more than 50% of global emissions—the use of coal also attained a historic peak, making up 41%. 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 the year 2030 than is consistent with keeping planet heating to 1.5C, with continued extraction of natural gas rationalized as a less polluting transition fuel.

The Illusion of Eco-Friendly Measures

Rather than focusing on economic incentives to speed up the elimination of carbon fuels, climate policies are heavily reliant on feel-good eco-positive approaches that seek to neutralize CO2 output by planting trees instead of cutting industrial emissions. While protecting, enlarging, and rehabilitating ecological absorbers like woodlands and marshes is inherently good, studies has demonstrated that there is insufficient territory to reach the worldwide target of carbon neutrality using ecological methods alone.

Roughly one billion hectares—a territory larger than the United States of America—is needed to fulfill carbon neutrality commitments. More than 40% of this area would need to be transformed from current applications like food production to carbon capture initiatives by the year 2060 at an never-before-seen pace.

Although this ideal restoration could be achieved, forests take time to mature and can burn down, so they cannot be considered as a fast or lasting carbon storage solution, especially in a rapidly shifting climate. As severe temperatures and aridity affect more of the planet, these well-intentioned efforts could actually go up in smoke.

The Weakening of Planetary Absorbers

Scientific evidence indicates that about half of the carbon dioxide released annually stays in the air, while the remainder is taken up by seas and land ecosystems. With global heating, these environmental absorbers are becoming less effective at soaking up CO₂, meaning that more carbon accumulates in the air, intensifying climate change. Shifting the reduction responsibility onto the agricultural and forest sectors simply relieves the oil and gas sector from the pressure to reduce emissions in the near future.

The Carbon Debt and Future Generations

Achieving net zero by 2050 demands carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which at present relies almost exclusively on land-based measures to absorb excess carbon from the atmosphere. Emitting companies can simply purchase offsets to counterbalance their discharges and continue with business as usual. Meanwhile, the planetary heat imbalance resulting from the burning of fossil fuels keeps on further destabilise the Earth’s climate. In effect, we are increasing our climate liability to our global account, passing on future generations with an unpayable liability.

To limit the scale and duration of overshoot the global warming targets, the planet eventually needs to surpass the balancing impact of carbon neutrality and begin to drawdown past carbon outputs to reach a carbon-negative state.

The Policy Misrepresentation of Carbon Neutrality

Based on 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 sector projections suggest around 0.1% of worldwide CO2 output. Without meaning to be controversial, the political distortion of net zero is an insidious loophole that distracts from the research-based necessity to eliminate the primary cause of our overheating planet—fossil fuels.

The Urgent Need for Concrete Action

Although this scientific reality should lead talks at the climate summit, history indicates that gradual, cautious steps and political kowtowing will prevail. Vague statements of long-term goals will continue to postpone the urgent need for concrete immediate action. Until policymakers have the courage to implement carbon pricing to bring the era of fossil fuels to a definitive end, we are releasing increasing amounts of CO2 to the air, worsening the physical catastrophe now unfolding all around us.

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