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While world leaders assemble in the Brazilian Amazon for the 30th UN Climate Change Conference, it is vital to review how we are faring together in lowering global greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite three decades of UN climate summits, nearly 50% of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution has been emitted after the year 1990. Coincidentally, 1990 marked the publication of the initial scientific evaluation by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which confirmed the danger of anthropogenic climate change. As scientists prepare the upcoming IPCC report, they do so aware that scientific findings remains eclipsed by political agendas. Despite sincere attempts, the world is still far from the path to prevent dangerous global warming.

Record-Breaking CO₂ Levels and Carbon-Based Fuel Dependency

Latest figures show that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reached a new peak of 423.9 parts per million in the year 2024, with the increase rate from 2023 to 2024 jumping by the biggest annual rise since modern measurements began in the late 1950s. Based on the Global Carbon Project, ninety percent of total global CO₂ emissions in 2024 came from the combustion of carbon-based energy sources, while the other tenth was due to alterations in land use such as deforestation and wildfires.

Although the rise in carbon emissions from fuels in 2024 was driven by increased use of natural gas and petroleum—accounting for more than 50% of global emissions—coal burning also attained a record high, constituting 41%. In spite of the previous climate summit's evaluation urging nations to move beyond fossil fuels, collective plans still intend to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in the year 2030 than aligns with keeping planet heating to 1.5C, with ongoing drilling of natural gas justified as a less polluting transition fuel.

The Illusion of Nature-Based Solutions

Instead of focusing on economic incentives to speed up the elimination of carbon fuels, environmental strategies are heavily reliant on feelgood nature positive solutions that aim to cancel out carbon emissions by planting trees rather than cutting industrial emissions. Although protecting, expanding, and rehabilitating ecological absorbers like forests and marshes is inherently good, research has shown that there is not enough land to reach the worldwide target of net zero emissions using ecological methods by themselves.

Approximately 1 billion hectares—an area larger than the USA—is needed to fulfill carbon neutrality commitments. Over 40% of this area would need to be converted from current applications like agriculture to carbon capture initiatives by 2060 at an never-before-seen pace.

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

The Weakening of Planetary Absorbers

Research data indicates that about 50% of the total CO₂ emitted annually stays in the air, while the rest is taken up by seas and land ecosystems. As the planet warms, these environmental absorbers are becoming less effective at soaking up CO₂, meaning that more carbon builds up in the air, intensifying climate change. Transferring the reduction responsibility onto the land sector effectively excuses the fossil fuel industry from the pressure to reduce emissions any time soon.

The Climate Liability and Coming Populations

Achieving carbon neutrality by mid-century requires carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which currently relies almost exclusively on land-based measures to soak up excess carbon from the air. Emitting companies can easily purchase offsets to counterbalance their emissions and proceed with business as usual. At the same time, the planetary heat imbalance resulting from the combustion of hydrocarbons continues to 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 planet ultimately needs to surpass the neutralising effect of net zero and begin to drawdown past carbon outputs to reach a carbon-negative state.

The Policy Misrepresentation of Carbon Neutrality

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 technology-based CDR represents only about a tiny fraction of the carbon released from carbon sources. More generous sector projections suggest around 0.1% of total global emissions. At the risk of sounding like a heretic, the political distortion of carbon neutrality is a deceptive gap that distracts from the research-based necessity to eliminate the main source of our warming world—fossil fuels.

The Critical Requirement for Concrete Action

Although this research-backed truth should dominate discussions at the climate summit, past events suggests that gradual, cautious steps and deference to politics will win out. Vague statements of future ambition will continue to postpone the urgent need for concrete immediate action. Until leaders have the courage to implement carbon pricing to terminate the age of hydrocarbons, we are adding more and more carbon to the air, worsening the environmental disaster currently happening across the globe.

The dilemma we confront is straightforward: take real action to the scientific reality of our crisis or suffer the results of this profound moral failure for centuries to come.