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While world leaders gather in the Brazilian Amazon for the 30th UN Climate Change Conference, it is vital to assess how we are faring together in lowering worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases.

Despite three decades of United Nations climate conferences, nearly 50% of the CO2 built up in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution has been emitted after the year 1990. Incidentally, 1990 was the publication of the First Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which verified the threat of anthropogenic climate change. As scientists prepare the Seventh Assessment Report, they do so knowing that scientific findings remains overshadowed by political agendas. Despite sincere attempts, the world is still dangerously off track to prevent dangerous global warming.

Unprecedented CO₂ Levels and Fossil Fuel Dependency

Latest figures show that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reached a record high of 423.9 parts per million in the year 2024, with the growth rate from 2023 to 2024 jumping by the largest yearly increase since record-keeping started in 1957. Based on the international carbon monitoring initiative, ninety percent of worldwide carbon dioxide output in 2024 came from the combustion of carbon-based energy sources, while the remaining 10% resulted from alterations in land use such as deforestation and wildfires.

Although the increase in fossil CO₂ emissions in 2024 was propelled by higher use of natural gas and petroleum—representing over half of global emissions—coal burning also reached a record high, making up 41%. In spite of the previous climate summit's evaluation calling for nations to transition away from fossil fuels, global strategies still aim to produce more than double the quantity of fossil fuels in 2030 than is consistent with limiting planet heating to 1.5C, with continued extraction of natural gas justified as a lower emission bridge fuel.

The Mirage of Eco-Friendly Measures

Instead of concentrating on financial motivators to speed up the phase-out of carbon fuels, climate policies are overly dependent on feelgood nature positive approaches that aim to neutralize carbon emissions by afforestation instead of reducing industrial emissions. While conserving, enlarging, and rehabilitating ecological absorbers like forests and wetlands is inherently good, research has shown that there is insufficient territory to achieve the global goal of carbon neutrality using ecological methods by themselves.

Approximately one billion hectares—a territory bigger than the USA—is needed to fulfill net zero pledges. More than 40% of this land would need to be converted from existing uses like agriculture to carbon capture initiatives by the year 2060 at an never-before-seen pace.

Although this regenerative utopia could be realized, woodlands take time to mature and are susceptible to fires, so they should not be viewed as a quick or permanent carbon storage solution, particularly in a fast-changing environment. As extreme heat and aridity engulf larger regions, these sincere attempts could literally be destroyed by fire.

The Diminishing of Natural Carbon Sinks

Scientific evidence tells us that about half of the total CO₂ emitted annually stays in the air, while the remainder is absorbed by oceans and terrestrial systems. As the planet warms, these environmental absorbers are becoming less effective at soaking up CO₂, meaning that additional CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, intensifying global warming. Shifting the mitigation burden onto the agricultural and forest sectors simply relieves the fossil fuel industry from the pressure to reduce emissions in the near future.

The Climate Liability and Coming Populations

Reaching net zero by 2050 demands carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which currently relies almost exclusively on land-based measures to absorb surplus CO2 from the atmosphere. Polluters can easily purchase offsets to counterbalance their emissions and proceed with business as usual. Meanwhile, the planetary heat imbalance caused by the burning of fossil fuels continues to further disrupt the Earth’s climate. Essentially, we are increasing our climate liability to our global account, leaving future generations with an unpayable liability.

To curb the scale and duration of exceeding the Paris Agreement temperature goals, the world ultimately needs to surpass the neutralising effect of carbon neutrality and start to remove past carbon outputs to reach net negative emissions.

The Policy Misrepresentation of Net Zero

Based on the latest numbers from the Global Carbon Project, vegetation-based CDR is currently capturing the equivalent of about 5% of annual fossil carbon dioxide emissions, while technology-based CDR represents only about a tiny fraction of the carbon released from carbon sources. Optimistic sector projections place it at around 0.1% of worldwide CO2 output. Without meaning to be controversial, the political distortion of carbon neutrality is an insidious loophole that takes focus away from the research-based necessity to eliminate the primary cause of our overheating planet—fossil fuels.

The Urgent Need for Definite Steps

While this research-backed truth should dominate discussions at the climate summit, history suggests that gradual, cautious steps and deference to politics will prevail. Ambiguous promises of long-term goals will continue to postpone the pressing requirement for definite short-term measures. Until policymakers are brave enough to implement carbon pricing to bring the era of fossil fuels to a definitive end, we are adding more and more carbon to the atmosphere, worsening the environmental disaster now unfolding all around us.

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