The primary force overheating our planet, destabilizing our climate, and acidifying our oceans is the ever-thickening blanket of fossil fuel CO2 piling up in our atmosphere. 

Despite decades of international climate summits (officially called United Nations Conference of the Parties, or COPs), the blanket of climate-destabilizing CO2 continues to grow thicker at an accelerating rate.

You can see this on my first chart. The red line shows atmospheric CO2 since 1980, in parts per million, and comes from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, (NOAA).

I’ve added grey dashed lines to show how the trend has grown ever steeper as the decades have rolled on. 

For example, the bottom dashed line shows the trend during the 1980s. That was the decade before the world’s first international climate gathering – the Rio Earth Summit in Brazil. That summit established the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with its annual COPs meetings.

The middle dashed line shows CO2 rising much faster during the 2000s. And the top dashed line shows that CO2 has been surging at the fastest rate so far in the decade following the global Paris Agreement at COP 21. 

As NOAA points out: “the rate of CO2 growth over the last decade is 100 to 200 times faster than what the Earth experienced during the transition from the last Ice Age. This is a real shock to the atmosphere.” To appreciate CO2’s immense climate altering power, consider that just one per cent of today’s rate was enough to melt a continental ice sheet covering all of what is now Canada and towering up to two miles thick. It was powerful enough to raise global sea levels by 125 meters. 

Today we are hammering away at climate stability 100 times harder than that. The WMO warned in 2022 that “[T]he accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is irreversible on human timescales and will affect climate for millennia.” That means our children, grandchildren and countless generations will be forced to live under whatever level of climate chaos our rampant fossil fuel CO2 emissions lock in. 

One trillion tonnes of fossil fuel pollution

People are using the atmosphere as an open sewer for their fossil fuel pollution. 

Since the Rio Earth Summit, people have dumped 1,000 billion tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) into the air from burning fossil coal, fossil oil, and fossil gas. This trillion-tonne spew-a-thon is shown by the black line on this second chart. (Note: data is in GtCO2 from the Global Carbon Project).

Notice that the dumping of fossil fuel CO2 has accelerated as well. 

During the 1980s the rate was already dangerously steep. That’s why the world gathered in 1992 at Rio to do something about it. 

Sadly, humans didn’t reduce our fossil fuel CO2, we cranked it ever higher – decade after decade. 

And notice that the decade since the Paris Agreement has been the worst so far – an off-the-chart CO2 tsunami. This year, all three forms of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) are all projected to be burned at record levels. We’re firing on all cylinders, accelerating our kids and future generations into a dystopian climate future. 

The red line on the chart shows that the atmosphere has only gained around half as much CO2 as fossil fuel burning has pumped into it. Since the Rio Earth Summit the atmosphere has gained 538 billion tonnes of CO2. 

Much of the rest was absorbed by the oceans – causing another major fossil-fueled planetary crisis, ocean acidification. The remainder was absorbed by enhanced plant growth on land. In climate geek-speak these are known as the “ocean sink” and the “land sink.” If these sinks ever falter, then even more fossil fuel CO2 will stay in the atmosphere – turbocharging the climate crisis further. 

In fact, that just happened over the last decade, according to the just released Global Carbon Budget for 2025: “The land and ocean CO₂ sink are 25 per cent and 7 per cent smaller, respectively, than they would have been without the effects of climate change and climate variability, on average for the 2015-2024 period.” The climate scientists that discovered this say it is still too early to tell how much of the weakening is temporary, caused by decadal variability – and how much is a more permanent shift caused by long-term climate change. 
 

Nostalgia for what seemed really bad before…

I’m going to wrap up with a look back at a chart I published in 2012, during COP 18 in Doha.

At the time I wrote: “Eighteen years of COP meetings, task forces, brinkmanship, declarations, policies, promises and protocols have not slowed the rise in global CO2 one tiny bit. Zip. Nada. Cero. Nulis. Zyro. Null. Sunna. Zero. Sefr. Ling. Nol. Yeong. Not even a tiny bit.”

It all seemed dire enough that the annual COPs were failing to bend the CO2 curve downwards. Little did I suspect that humanity would spend the next 12 years doing the opposite – bending the CO2 curve sharply upwards and sprinting away from climate safety. 

Back then, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, Dr. James Hansen, gave this blunt warning in his recently released book, “Storms of my Grandchildren”: 

"Ladies and gentlemen, your governments are lying through their teeth. You may wish to use softer language, but the truth is that they know that their planned approach will not come anywhere near achieving the intended global objectives. Moreover, they are now taking actions that, if we do not stop them, will lock in guaranteed failure," he wrote.

"The problem is that our governments, under the heavy thumb of special interests, are ... pursuing policies to get every last drop of fossil fuel."

Now we find ourselves in 2025, with COP 30 underway in Belem, Brazil. Atmospheric CO2 levels haven’t levelled off, they’re rocketing upwards. Fossil fuel burning hasn’t declined, it’s record high across the board. Major ecosystems are now starting to collapse, burn, wither. And extreme weather is hammering away with increasing fury, causing record damages. Even major ocean currents have started to falter. 

Here at home in Canada, James Hansen is being proved right – our government’s planned approach hasn’t come anywhere near achieving its climate promises. We’ve been setting emissions targets since 1988. And we’ve wildly missed all of them, because our government repeatedly fails to put policies in place to meet them. 

And now, the few undersized climate policies Canada has are on the chopping block. Carbon taxes covering a third of our emissions were recently axed, making it $20 billion cheaper to dump CO2 in Canada. Zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) sales were climbing steadily and on track to meet our 2026 target, until the government killed off the rebates for them and sales crashed. Now the ZEV targets and sales mandates are getting the axe too. Meanwhile new sales of fossil fuel burning vehicles have surged to their highest levels in six years. Around the world, high-quality, low-cost, China-made ZEVs are hugely popular. But our government is blocking Canadians from benefiting from them by imposing a Trumpian 100 per cent tariff. Rules restricting corporate greenwashing have been neutered. And the long-promised CO2 limit for our nation’s largest emitting sector, the oil and gas industry, is withering on the vine. It’s a smorgasbord of climate capitulation. 

Meanwhile, our government is also proving James Hansen right about pursuing every last drop of fossil fuel. Taxpayer billions have been shoveled into dramatically expanding fossil fuel extraction – from building giant pipelines to fast-tracking a massive new liquified natural gas (LNG) industry. Canada used to extract the same amount of fossil CO2 per capita as the Americans. Not anymore. Canadian CO2 extraction has surged to twice the American rate and six times the global average. Apparently, even as the climate crisis grows ever more dangerous, that still isn’t enough. Must. Extract. More. CO2.

Every last drop, come hell and high water.