Reacción a "For the first time since the pandemic, carbon emissions from fossil fuels could fall this year"

This annual exercise, which has been systematically assessing trends in fossil emissions and CO₂ sinks for over two decades, is of great value as it enables us to determine whether the trends in net contributions of this climate forcing factor to the atmosphere are rising or falling.

The projected decline in fossil CO₂ emissions in 2026 (-0.4 per cent) is an encouraging sign, although to determine whether this represents a trend reversal or is due, in part, to a temporary factor, decreases will need to be observed over several years. The most notable aspect of the report is precisely this underlying trend, in which several dozen countries are reducing emissions whilst their economies are growing (there were far fewer such countries a decade ago). Even so, the authors themselves caution that a decline in a single year does not constitute a peak and that atmospheric CO₂ levels continue to rise.

The main limitation is that the figure for 2026 is a projection based on partial data and carries a wide margin of error; consequently, a slight increase cannot be ruled out once the 2026 data are finalised. There also remains a high degree of uncertainty regarding emissions from deforestation and the ocean’s actual absorption capacity. What does appear to be confirmed by the historical data series is that climate change is already weakening biological sinks and that the powerful El Niño event of 2026 could cause the terrestrial sink to collapse again in 2027, as it did in 2023–2024.

The message is clear: the carbon budget for 1.5 °C is almost exhausted, and CO₂ capture is now doing less and less to offset annual emissions.