This is undoubtedly the issue that worries me most: our inability to change technology, to abandon one that is clearly harmful and adopt others that are clearly more efficient, cheaper and cleaner. I know this issue is polemic given that some irresponsible people apparently believe that science facts are debatable, so that’s why I try to back up my articles with as many scientific links as possible. So regardless of what you think and whether you are a climate denialist or not, please, check the links…
This year ends with yet more disturbing data: CO2 levels continue to reach record highs, methane from wetlands is growing at an unprecedented rate, and the absorption capacity of natural CO2 sinks such as forests, soils and oceans seem to be waning. Our planet is losing its ability to mitigate the harm we are doing.
The fires of 2024 released more carbon dioxide than any other year in the last decade, with the World Meteorological Organization confirming that greenhouse gas concentrations are growing faster than ever. It is as if the biological mechanisms of the planet have gone from giving signals of stress directly to systemic failure.
The official narrative remains the idea of the energy transition, but the facts belie optimism. There are no real or even minimally hopeful signs of a global reduction in fossil fuel use, so emissions continue to rise. Europe celebrates the fact that electricity generation for the first time now makes up 54% of the total: an admirable achievement, but insufficient in the face of the growth in global energy consumption and the return to burning coal in other parts of the world.
The problem is no longer just emissions, but political and economic inertia. Big banks are quietly withdrawing their climate commitments, disguising divestment as “strategic adjustment” in the political landscape. At the same time, the White House is once again treating the climate emergency as an ideological issue. While Donald Trump considers climate action a joke, JP Morgan describes it as essential to sustaining the infrastructure that allows for the development of AI.
Meanwhile, ecosystems collapse while governments discuss the semantics of the issue in useless conventions held in countries determined to continue living off fossil fuels. And the market, which promised to be the engine of the transition, has begun to behave as a brake. Natural sinks, which until now absorbed about 50% of human emissions, are becoming saturated. If they cease to work, climate change will enter an exponential phase in which every ton of carbon dioxide emitted will remain in the atmosphere for centuries.
The most disturbing thing is not the lack of technological solutions, which exist, but the moral apathy and the absence of minimally reasonable scales of values. Humanity is acting like a nervous system that stops feeling pain: the damage no longer hurts, only its threshold of perception is normalized. We have been talking about a “point of no return” for decades as if it were a future border, when in reality we have already crossed it a long time ago without noticing it. The 2025 data is no longer a warning; it’s the diagnosis.
The paradox is almost poetic: while we dedicate ourselves to developing increasingly powerful AI, capable of writing, painting and reasoning, the planet that sustains them is losing consciousness, less and less capable of correcting itself and slowly shutting down. The Earth is forgetting to breathe, and we’re not paying any attention.
The question is no longer whether we still have time to avoid disaster. It is whether we will be able, at least, to see the disaster that is unfolding before our eyes.
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This post was previously published on Enrique Dans’ blog.
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