Net zero is an insidious loophole that distracts from the scientific imperative to eliminate fossil fuels

November 7, 2025

Joëlle Gergis

As world leaders gather in Brazil this year for Cop30 – the first Amazonian Cop – it’s worth doing a quick reality check on how we are collectively tracking to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite 30 years of UN climate summits, about half of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution has been emitted since 1990. Incidentally, 1990 was the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the global authority on climate change science – released its First Assessment Report confirming the threat of human-caused global warming. As scientists all over the world prepare the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report, we do so knowing that our work is still being overshadowed by politics. Despite all the well-intentioned half-measures, the truth is that the world is still disastrously off track to limit dangerous climate change.

‘The world needs to go well beyond the neutralising effect of net zero and begin to drawdown cumulative historical emissions.’ Photograph: AFP/Getty Images