Why, after 40 years, the end of the fossil-fuel age is not insight?
In 1987, the first UN sustainability report (United Nations, 1987) was published by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WECB) putting the bold intentions forward of fostering: Development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. During the Earh Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the report was turned into a comprehensive but non-binding plan – Agenda 21 – for the world to act and implement solutions for the many identified socio-economic and environmental challenges and make the world a sustainable and livable place for all. Many more conferences and meetings followed. Forty years after this so-called Brundtland report (published on 20.03.1987) named after the commission’s chairwoman Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former Norwegian Prime Minister, the question can be asked if the objectives formulated in “Our Common Future” and subsequent documents have been achieved, and society has become sustainable by now, 40 years later.
In the meantime, the world population grew from about 5 billion in 1987 to about 8.3 billion in 2026 and counting to an estimated 9.7 billion in 2050. The good news is that the annual growth rate slows down in view of declining births per woman. The implication is that the influence of humanity on the environment i.e., the anthropogenic stress on the earth’s resources and biosphere has almost doubled in these 40 years.
Emissions and Global Warming.
For instance, between 1990 and 2023, the materials extraction has increased from around 47 Giga tonnes to more than 104 Giga tonnes (Giga is 109, being a billion or 1000 million) (Materialflows.net, 2025). The use of metals and non-metallic minerals has even tripled over this period. Noteworthy is the growth in silica sands use (from an estimated 3-4 to about 12 Giga tonnes) for concrete and glass, mainly used in the building industry. This to the extent that a “running out of sand-crisis” has become a reality today (Beiser, 2018). Furthermore, the global use of all materials has accelerated faster than the world population, meaning that evermore materials per person have been extracted on Earth.
Domestic Extraction of the World in 1970-2024 by Natural Group.
Extraction and shaping materials for their ultimate purpose and use requires huge amounts of energy including the transportation of goods from producer to consumer, the final consumption and associated after-use handling. Traditionally, since the start of the industrial revolution in the 18th century fossil fuels, mainly coal, petroleum and natural gas have powered these activities. To date, to a majority, these energy sources are still being used to satisfy the materials transformation needs and subsequent uses of all manufactured goods. The consequence was and still is that the emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHG), composed out of about 70-80% carbon dioxide (CO2), have continued and are continuing to increase globally. In 1990, these so-called anthropogenic (direct or indirect caused by human activity) global GHG emissions were calculated to be about 33 Giga tonnes while in 2023 they were close to 53 Giga tonnes[i]. In 2023, China, United States of America, India, EU-27, Russia and Brazil were the world’s largest GHG emitters responsible for close to 50% of all emissions.
Since 1990, the EU-27 has managed to reduce its GHG emissions mainly by moving away from coal, sticking to nuclear power plants and embarking on renewable energy sources. Nevertheless, major efforts are still needed to advance and increase power generation without fossil fuels to drastically reduce GHG emissions and meet rising demand for energy and goods.
The emphasis is clearly on electrification for the power sourcing. Many avenues are being pursued to directly or indirectly capture the solar energy via photo-voltaic cells or wind, via hydropower, or to use renewable gasses either green hydrogen, methane or ethanol from biomass as well as CO2 based methanol, to mention the most common approaches. The transformation process however is very slow and faces many hurdles from “not in my backyard”, too stringent legislation and administrative procedures, to unfavorable economics and some open technology challenges related to scaling.
Advancing non-fossil fuel-based energy sources just for the current needs is insufficient as the overall demand for renewable energy is rising. Population growth, urbanization, emerging economies, global digitalization, electrification of transport and heating/cooling of buildings, and other mega trends will require an estimated 8 to 15% rise in global energy demand by 2035 (IEA, 2025).
In 2026, the share of global electricity demand stands at about 21% and is growing twice as fast as overall energy demand from fossil-fuels. It indicates there is still a very long way to go to get away from fossil-fuel-based energy sources and the associated anthropogenic GHG emissions. The targeted 55% GHG emission reduction by 2030 and to become climate neutral in 2050 as the set goal of the EU Green deal, seems a too optimistic goal requiring major socio-economic changes to happen fast. For many other major GHG emitting countries such targets may be even not within reach any time soon in the 21st century.
In the meantime, the unrelenting anthropogenic GHG emissions continue to accumulate in the atmosphere and cause a gradual warming up of the biosphere. The sun’s radiation energy reflected from the earth’s surface is trapped by these gasses, which results in a greenhouse effect as was first demonstrated by the experiments of Eunice Foote in 1856 (Foote, 1856). Besides carbon dioxide (CO2) there are various GHGs that have different capacities of absorbing heat. For example, methane (CH4) absorbs 28[ii] times more heat compared to CO2, indicating that for one unit of CH4 28 units of CO2 have the same greenhouse effect. Di-nitrogen oxide (N2O) commonly known as laughing gas has an even higher heat absorbing capacity of 273 units. Considering these equivalent effects, the presence of all GHGs in the atmosphere can be expressed as one number i.e., the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) number.
GHG Emissions for EU 27 and Global.
Evolution of Global GHG emissions according to industry sectors.
The rise of GHG emissions is directly related with the rise of an average land-sea surface temperature. A global average does imply that in various geographies the local temperature has already risen above the 1.5 C target set by the Paris agreement of 2015.
The rise of global warming is most strongly related to a gradual change of the global climate. Over the years, the precise impact of a change in weather patterns can vary for the different regions on earth but remains difficult to predict accurately locally. Therefore, the impact on continents, countries or regions may significantly differ in view of the complex nature of earthly weather patterns. Besides faster fluctuations of weather extremes from very cold to very hot day temperatures or from long periods of rain to long lasting droughts there are many more direct or indirect consequences to anticipate.
Melting of the ice caps due to higher average temperatures eventually make global sea levels rise to reclaim islands, coastal land and even cities. If all polar ice would melt sea level is estimated to be 70 m higher than today. The colder fresh melt water in the salty seawater at the north pole and mainly from Greenland’s melting ice cap disturbs the North Atlantic conveyer belt known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) that brings relatively warm water from the equator to Europe. A faltering of that system will significantly change Europe’s weather patterns i.e., lowering the average temperature (Portmann, Swingedouw, Khattab, & Chavent, 2026) . It equally will affect rainfall patterns in India, South America and West Africa. Sea levels will rise at the North American East coast and endanger the Amazon forest and the Antarctic ice cap. Long-periods of droughts may occur that can cause desertification, threaten potable water supplies and common agricultural practices in several parts of the world.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is weakening and has collapsed before about 12’900 years ago.
Additionally, increased global warming allows invasive flora and fauna to migrate and cause an onslaught on local existing species at higher latitudes. Similarly, pests and diseases can migrate more easily with higher frequency of infections and illnesses not or never encountered before in humans. Even more worrisome is that microorganisms may mutate faster and adapt to higher temperatures thus breaking the natural human protection barrier of 37 C body temperature (Money, 2024). The list of existential threats for humanity and the biosphere is getting very long.
Many of these weather extremes and associated side effect are expected to become more frequent but will be experienced in different ways in different geographies. Local habitats will change and will impact not only plants and animal but equally human migration in search for survival.
It should be noted that even when there would be no more anthropogenic emissions today, the biosphere is still emitting GHGs estimated to be about 29.1- 40.0 Gt CO2e. The main sources are volcanoes, forest fires, permafrost, wetlands. Fortunately, the land and oceans are natural sinks for absorbing GHGs. Unfortunately, the additional anthropogenic emissions have been shown to weaken these sinks by reducing their efficiency by about 20%. Less trees and ocean acidification are the key causes. (Vermeulen & Parampil, 2023) (Friedlingstein, et al., 2026) (Global Carbon Project, 2025)
Progress?
After all these years of knowing, few citizens seem to realize that the slowly evolving but accelerating process of climate change is to change habitats. Even life in cities may become unbearable without better insulated housing and cooling systems during the summer months. As it remains difficult to predict the exact consequences of when and where cataclysmic events will occur locally and across the globe, the impression is created that it will not happen in “my back yard”. Think again.
Taking stock after 40 years since the Our Common Future document was published, it appears, notwithstanding some successes (e.g., the stratospheric “ozone hole” is closing again (World Meteoroligical Organization, 2025) more non-fossil fuel based renewable energy is produced. A sustainable society for all thus remains a far-off destination to travel. The road ahead looks very long, winding, uphill and stony. At the current, very slow rate that remediations are implemented to reduce GHG emissions, in combination with an increasing world population demanding more energy and material goods, the odds for a sustainable society anytime soon look dim. The mainstream pursuit for affluence of the last 80 years continues and does not consider at all the declining state of the biosphere i.e., the commons.
This begs the question of why this state of play is possible after all these years. It was not necessary to wait for the 1987 “Our Common Future” report to be aware that anthropogenic pollution was on the rise and the earth’s resources were being depleted at a breathtaking speed. Over the last 200 years scientists have understood and proven beyond doubt that the living space for humans and living organisms is changing.
A Brief History.
A brief history recap on key developments (Somerville, 2025) illustrates the growing insight and undeniable evidence of a climate change in the making:
In 1824, Joseph Fourier proposed in his work titled “Theorie analytique de la chaleur” (Analytical Theory of Heat) that the atmosphere acts like a glass greenhouse retaining heat that would otherwise escape into space. (Fleming, 1999)
At the time in the 19th century, being a female scientist, publishing work was challenging but finally in the 1856 paper Eunice Foote demonstrated the effects of CO2 as a greenhouse gas and hypothesized on its relationship to warmer climates. (Ortiz & Jackson, 2020)
In 1859, John Tyndall an Irish physicist using sophisticated equipment showed that gasses like CO2, CH4, and water block infra-red radiation while allowing sunlight to pass though proving the fundamental basis of the greenhouse effect. (Jackson, 2018)
Svante Arrhenius a Swedish physical chemist calculated how much the earth would warm up to 5 – 6 C by doubling the CO2 levels in the atmosphere in 1896. (Crawford, 1997)
Guy Calendar, a steam engineer, provided the first observational proof that global temperature was already on the rise in correlation with the CO2 levels in 1938 (311 ppm, up from the 1750’s pre-industrial 280 ppm). (Callendar, 1938)
At Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii far away from any experiment polluting factors, Charles Keeling a professor in Oceanography in 1958 gave unequivocal proof of rising CO2 concentration by systematic and daily measurement of atmospheric CO2. By analyzing the carbon isotope C14 a distinction could be made between fossil fuel and nature produced CO2. The program is continued till today making the counter in early 2026 at about 430 ppm compared to the 315 ppm first recorded in 1958 and an estimated 280 ppm in pre-industrial times. (Howe, 2014)
The oldest ice core records for atmospheric CO2 and temperature change in Antarctica.
In the 1980’s French and Soviet scientists provided a record of the earth’s atmospheric CO2 in Antarctic ice cores dating back to about 150’000 and later 800’000 years confirming the greenhouse gas global temperature relationship. (Bauska, 2024) (Petit, 2020)
Since the 1950’s, fossil fuels powered the relentless pursuit for material goods to make possible consumerism at an unprecedented scale. The consequences in terms environmental pollution and general waste were exposed in many publications.
In Vance Packard’s book, The Waste Makers (1960) unbridled consumerism and the impact on wasteful use of resources was exposed. (Packard, 1960)
Rachel Carson in Silent Spring (1962) noticed that the birds were not singing anymore in spring because they had died of pollution and toxic chemicals. (Carson, 1962)
The Club of Rome published “The Limits to Growth” predicting (incorrectly qua timing but still a very relevant topic today) the world running out of material resources. (Meadows, Randers, & Behrens III, 1972) (Meadows, Randers, & Meadows, 2004)
In 2016, George Monbiot rhetorically asked: How did we get into this mess? in his equally titled book. (Montbiot, 2016) He was critically looking for answers and possible remedies. As a columnist for The Guardian, he expanded the environmental world perspective with the complex socio-economic and political context of a mainly irrational functioning human society. Just like other authors in various specialized disciplines had observed before (Kahneman, 2011) (Ariely, 2008) (Kets de Vries, 2006) the book pointed out many behavioral human failings underlying indecision, lack of action or even bad, counterproductive and regressive action instigated by egocentricity, narcissism, stupidity, idiocy, fake believes, greed, avarice, and a long list of other unwelcome traits.
During all this time and even much before voices were raised by the public and scientists who were quantifying with evermore precision and technical detail the GHG emissions. Every conceivable indicator that measured the health of the planet was generated. They lectured, published books, papers and reports with conclusions on the potential impact for humanity and the biosphere. To make sure governments were provided with the same and latest scientific information to help steer climate policies the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The IPCC released their first Assessment Report (AR1) in 1990 and the latest (AR6) in 2023. (IPCC, 2023)
Accordingly, lack of experimental data, documentation, press releases, blogs, movies, video clips, documentaries, investigative journalism, personal stories and local observable evidence of a changing climate and habitat, cannot be the reason for not being aware and not taking preventive action by those in power or those able to do so i.e., everybody.
Awareness and Action.
Creating awareness and providing a critical look on the state of global affairs certainly are important to help understand context and appreciate what the big issues are. Eventually it can lead to proposing potential remedies and possibly define a plan for cooperation and action with the intention to act. Yet there seems to be a bias for lots of critique, endless discussions, making big plans without follow up, telling others what needs to be done and watching what happens while continuing with business as usual. The actions if taken tend to focus on easy fixes that deal with the symptoms and not the underlying cause or causes. Sometimes the proposed and implemented fixes may have unanticipated consequences in the future, requiring new fixes that only make things worse. For example, landfilling municipal solid waste (MSW) will keep cities clean but may pollute underground water reservoirs, emit potent GHG’s like CH4 and CO2, destroy habitats, contaminate land space and impact social life in nearby communities. Moving to incineration of MSW resolves some issues but may create even more GHG and fine particle emissions without benefitting the nearby local communities. Less fossil fuel-based cars and lorries on the road reduce GHG emissions and rubber tire particles formation but impacts overall mobility of people and e-commerce of goods. Alternative transportation means such as battery powered vehicles reduce emissions but still require rubber tires and may not reduce traffic jams and congested highways. Trains, boats, drones, bikes and planes are valid alternatives but often require significant investments in new infra-structure, solutions for access and cost, and a rethink of social behavior for all. Electrification requires a total structural overhaul of the existing distribution grid. The list of challenges becomes long and complex.
Nonetheless, and whatever the reasons, the conditions safeguarding human and other life in the biosphere on Earth are slowly but surely changing for the worse. Time to act and reverse this massive anthropogenic impact summarized in rising GHG emission numbers is running very short and may be already too late i.e., the consequences become a fact of life for the next 2 to 4 generations. Much more and faster action is required to address and prevent the many doomsday scenarios of becoming a reality. All this will need to be accomplished by the present generation and their offsprings living their earthly life in an ever faster-changing environment. They will need to find answers quickly to many existential and behavioral questions and come up with solutions for difficult, complex socio-economic and environmental challenges. To continue living a prosperous life in a biosphere that makes it possible demands immediate action. Unfortunately, many distracting geopolitical games are still being played by some power hungry egotistic old men and ideology or religious male fanatics that do not constructively contribute to the real challenge of establishing a sustainable future for humanity.
As hope dies last, so let us all begin to understand and shape the future. A future where smart energy and materials use need to become the new socio-economic paradigm in a world where humans can sustainably live together in peace. 40 years of good intentions did not suffice. The job left to be done will now require heroes.
References.
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Vermeulen, A. W., & Parampil, S. R. (2023). Fluxes Volume 2: Nature based solutions for net zero. Retrieved from Carbon emissions and sinks vary between years: https://www.icos-cp.eu/fluxes/2/
Bauska, T. (2024). Ice Cores and Climate Change. In Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science, 3rd Edition.
Money, N. P. (2024). Fungal thermotolerance revisited and why climate change is unlikely to be supercharging pathogenic fungi (yet). Fungal Biology, 1638-1641.
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[i] The global anthropogenic GHG emission data from various sources – reports and websites – may not always be identical for multiple reasons. Although not necessarily accurate, the data are relevant and indicative, and over time show trends. For example, the latest published sixth IPCC report provides global GHG emissions as 59 +/- 6.6 Giga tonnes for the year 2019 being 54% higher than in 1990.
[ii] According to the IPCC Assessment Report (AR6) the CO2e number for methane reflects a global warming potential over 100 years (GWP100) of 27.9 to 29.8 while over 20 years the GWP20 is 81.2 to 82.5. It means that 1 metric ton of methane has the same warming impact than 28 metric tons of CO2 over a period of 100 years.
