The world still isn’t sucking enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to meet the Paris climate targets, scientists said Tuesday. And the gap grows wider every year that humanity delays meaningful cuts to global greenhouse gas emissions.
That’s the punchline of a new report on the state of global carbon dioxide removal, the practice of drawing CO2 out of the air to help tackle climate change. It’s an update to the report’s first edition, which was published in January 2023.
Nations worldwide are scrubbing about 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, mainly by planting trees, the report says. But experts estimate they’ll need to remove at least 7 billion tons annually by midcentury.
Meanwhile, global emissions must fall rapidly to stay on the Paris track. Humanity spews nearly 40 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year through the burning of fossil fuels.
