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As global leaders convene in the Brazilian Amazon for Cop30, it is essential to assess our collective progress in lowering worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases.

Despite 30 years of UN climate summits, approximately half of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution has been emitted after the year 1990. Incidentally, 1990 marked the publication of the initial scientific evaluation by the IPCC, which confirmed the danger of anthropogenic climate change. While researchers work on the upcoming IPCC report, they do so knowing that scientific findings remains overshadowed by political agendas. Regardless of sincere attempts, the planet is remains dangerously off track to prevent dangerous global warming.

Record-Breaking CO₂ Levels and Fossil Fuel Dependency

Recent data indicate that CO₂ concentrations reached a new peak of 423.9 ppm in 2024, with the increase rate from 2023 to 2024 surging by the biggest annual rise since modern measurements began in the late 1950s. According to the international carbon monitoring initiative, ninety percent of total global CO₂ emissions in last year came from the combustion of carbon-based energy sources, while the other tenth was due to land-use changes such as forest clearance and wildfires.

While the increase in carbon emissions from fuels in 2024 was propelled by increased use of gas and oil—representing more than 50% of worldwide discharges—the use of coal also reached a historic peak, constituting 41%. In spite of the previous climate summit's evaluation urging nations to move beyond carbon fuels, collective plans still intend to extract over twice the quantity of fossil fuels in 2030 than aligns with limiting global warming to 1.5C, with ongoing drilling of natural gas rationalized as a lower emission transition fuel.

The Illusion of Nature-Based Solutions

Rather than focusing on financial motivators to accelerate the phase-out of carbon fuels, climate policies are overly dependent on feel-good nature positive approaches that seek to neutralize carbon emissions by afforestation instead of cutting industrial emissions. Although protecting, expanding, and restoring ecological absorbers like forests and marshes is inherently good, research has demonstrated that there is not enough land to reach the worldwide target of net zero emissions using ecological methods alone.

Roughly 1 billion hectares—a territory larger than the USA—is required to fulfill net zero pledges. Over 40% of this land would need to be converted from existing uses like agriculture to carbon capture initiatives by 2060 at an unprecedented rate.

Even if this regenerative utopia could be realized, forests require years to grow and can burn down, so they cannot be considered as a quick or lasting carbon storage solution, especially in a rapidly shifting environment. While extreme heat and aridity affect larger regions, these sincere attempts could literally go up in smoke.

The Diminishing of Natural Carbon Sinks

Research data indicates that about half of the total CO₂ emitted annually remains in the atmosphere, while the remainder is taken up by oceans and terrestrial systems. 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 agricultural and forest sectors simply relieves the oil and gas sector from the urgency to reduce emissions any time soon.

The Climate Liability and Coming Populations

Achieving net zero by 2050 demands carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which currently relies almost exclusively on terrestrial methods to soak up surplus CO2 from the air. Emitting companies can simply buy carbon credits to compensate for their emissions and proceed with normal operations. At the same time, the planetary heat imbalance caused by the burning of fossil fuels continues to further destabilise the global climate system. Essentially, we are increasing our climate liability to our global account, passing on our descendants with an insurmountable burden.

To limit the magnitude and length of exceeding the global warming targets, the world eventually needs to go well beyond the neutralising effect of carbon neutrality and begin 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, plant-based carbon removal is presently capturing the equal of about five percent of yearly CO2 from fuels, while technology-based CDR represents only about one-millionth of the CO2 emitted from fossil fuels. More generous industry estimates suggest around zero point one percent of worldwide CO2 output. At the risk of sounding like a heretic, the policy twisting of net zero is an insidious loophole that distracts from the research-based necessity to eliminate the primary cause of our warming world—fossil fuels.

The Critical Requirement for Definite Steps

While this scientific reality should dominate talks at the climate summit, history suggests that polite incrementalism and deference to politics will prevail. Ambiguous promises of long-term goals will keep on delay the urgent need 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 air, compounding the environmental disaster currently happening across the globe.

The challenge we confront is simple: genuinely respond to the scientific reality of our predicament or suffer the consequences of this deep ethical lapse for centuries to come.