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While world leaders convene in Brazil for Cop30, it is crucial to review how we are faring together in reducing worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases.

Despite 30 years of UN climate summits, nearly 50% of the CO2 built up in the atmosphere after the dawn of industrialization has been emitted after the year 1990. Coincidentally, 1990 marked the release of the First Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which confirmed the threat of human-caused global warming. While researchers work on the upcoming IPCC report, they do so knowing that their work remains eclipsed by political agendas. Despite well-intentioned efforts, the world is remains dangerously off track to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Unprecedented CO₂ Levels and Fossil Fuel Dependency

Latest figures indicate that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels hit a new peak of 423.9 ppm in 2024, with the growth rate from 2023 to 2024 surging by the biggest annual rise since record-keeping started in the late 1950s. According to the international carbon monitoring initiative, 90% of worldwide carbon dioxide output in last year originated from the combustion of carbon-based energy sources, while the remaining 10% resulted from land-use changes such as deforestation and forest fires.

Although the rise in fossil CO₂ emissions in 2024 was driven by increased use of gas and oil—accounting for over half of worldwide discharges—coal burning also reached a record high, making up forty-one percent. Despite Cop28’s global stocktake calling for nations to move beyond carbon fuels, global strategies still aim to extract over twice the amount of fossil fuels in the year 2030 than aligns with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, with ongoing drilling of gas justified as a less polluting bridge fuel.

The Mirage of Nature-Based Solutions

Instead of focusing on economic incentives to speed up the phase-out of carbon fuels, climate policies are overly dependent on feelgood nature positive solutions that seek to neutralize CO2 output by planting trees instead of cutting industrial emissions. While protecting, enlarging, and restoring natural carbon sinks like forests and marshes is inherently good, studies has demonstrated that there is insufficient territory to reach the worldwide target of carbon neutrality using nature-based solutions by themselves.

Roughly one billion hectares—an area bigger than the USA—is needed to meet net zero pledges. Over forty percent of this area would need to be converted from existing uses like food production to carbon capture initiatives by 2060 at an never-before-seen pace.

Although this regenerative utopia could be achieved, woodlands require years to grow and can burn down, so they should not be viewed as a fast or lasting carbon storage solution, especially in a fast-changing environment. As severe temperatures and dryness engulf more of the planet, these sincere attempts could actually be destroyed by fire.

The Diminishing of Natural Carbon Sinks

Scientific evidence indicates that about half of the total CO₂ emitted each year remains in the atmosphere, while the rest is taken up by oceans and land ecosystems. With global heating, these natural carbon sinks are becoming less effective at soaking up CO₂, meaning that additional CO2 builds up in the atmosphere, further exacerbating climate change. Shifting the mitigation burden onto the land sector effectively excuses the oil and gas sector from the urgency to reduce emissions in the near future.

The Climate Liability and Future Generations

Achieving carbon neutrality by mid-century requires carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which at present relies almost exclusively on land-based measures to soak up excess carbon from the atmosphere. Polluters can simply purchase offsets to counterbalance their emissions and continue with business as usual. Meanwhile, the planetary heat imbalance resulting from the burning of fossil fuels keeps on further disrupt the global climate system. In effect, we are increasing our climate liability to our global account, passing on future generations with an insurmountable burden.

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

The Policy Misrepresentation of Carbon Neutrality

According to the latest numbers from the Global Carbon Project, plant-based carbon removal is presently capturing the equivalent of about five percent of annual fossil carbon dioxide emissions, while technology-based CDR represents only about a tiny fraction of the CO2 emitted from carbon sources. Optimistic sector projections place it at around 0.1% of total global emissions. At the risk of sounding like a heretic, the political distortion of carbon neutrality is an insidious loophole that takes focus away from the scientific imperative to eradicate the main source of our warming world—carbon-based energy.

The Critical Requirement for Definite Steps

Although this scientific reality should dominate talks at the climate summit, past events indicates that polite incrementalism and deference to politics will prevail. Vague statements of future ambition will continue to delay the pressing requirement for concrete immediate action. Unless leaders are brave enough to put a price on carbon to bring the era of fossil fuels to a definitive end, we are adding more and more carbon to the atmosphere, worsening the physical catastrophe now unfolding across the globe.

The dilemma we confront is simple: take real action to the evidence-based situation of our predicament or suffer the consequences of this profound moral failure for generations ahead.