Civil society organizations, Indigenous groups, and frontline communities are calling for a complete phase-out of fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency too has warned that to keep global heating below 1.5°C, fossil fuel production must fall by at least 55 percent between 2023 and 2035. Without a managed decline, the world could burn through its remaining carbon budget in just two years.
Here are three big reasons why we need to end fossil fuels urgently, and why our lives depend on it:
1. Fossil fuels are behind the climate crisis
Coal, oil, and gas remain the engine of global warming. They power factories, vehicles, and homes but they also release carbon dioxide and methane that trap heat and destabilize weather patterns.
Most of the world’s electricity is still produced by burning fossil fuels, even though renewables are expanding fast. Heavy industry, cement, steel, plastics, adds a huge share of emissions. Transport, dominated by petroleum, contributes nearly a quarter of all carbon-dioxide pollution.
Each step of this process, extraction, combustion, and waste, builds the blanket of greenhouse gases warming the planet, and driving us closer to 1.5 degrees of heating, the limit past which the impacts of the climate crisis will become catastrophic. Ending dependence on fossil fuels is the only way to stabilize the climate and secure clean, affordable energy for everyone.
2. Fossil fuels are supercharging climate disasters
The fingerprints of fossil fuels are on nearly every extreme-weather headline today. Burning coal, oil, and gas is amplifying heatwaves, floods, droughts and tropical cyclones worldwide. Each new record-breaking storm or wildfire is another warning of what continued extraction means for humanity.
The losses are staggering. Farmers face scorched fields after months of drought. Coastal families rebuild their homes again and again after floods. Millions are being displaced by disasters their communities did nothing to cause. Far from being random acts of nature, these are the visible and heavy costs of a global economy still anchored down to fossil fuels.
3. Fossil fuels are destroying lives and rights
The harm caused by fossil fuels doesn’t stop at pollution and extreme weather patterns. It runs deeply through people’s homes, bodies, and ecosystems. A brand-new, first-of-its-kind report by Amnesty International and Better Planet Laboratory, Extraction Extinction: Why the lifecycle of fossil fuels threatens life, nature and human rights exposes the depth and scale of this crisis. The findings are truly unsettling:
- A global web of sacrifice zones
At least 2 billion people, nearly a quarter of humanity, live within five kilometres of more than 18,000 fossil fuel sites across 170 countries. Among them are 520 million children, forced to grow up breathing polluted air and drinking contaminated water. Over 463 million people live within just one kilometre of these facilities, where exposure to toxic emissions and health risks is exponentially higher.
The report describes these areas as “sacrifice zones” that are heavily contaminated places where low-income and marginalized communities bear a disproportionate burden of exposure to pollution and toxic substances. In these zones, coal plants, oil fields, and gas terminals poison rivers, destroy farmland, and make entire neighborhoods unsafe to live in. All this so that fossil fuel companies can continue extracting profit from the planet’s destruction.
- Disproportionate harm to Indigenous Peoples and ecosystems
The damage is not equally shared. Over 16% of global fossil fuel infrastructure lies on Indigenous territories, often imposed without consent. These projects violate land rights, threaten cultural survival, and uproot communities whose stewardship has long protected forests and water sources. At least 32% of sites overlap with critical ecosystems, forests, wetlands, and coastal zones that regulate the climate and sustain biodiversity.
- Expansion against all logic
Even as the climate emergency intensifies, the fossil fuel industry is still expanding. More than 3,500 new projects are currently proposed, in development, or under construction, many in regions already suffering from pollution and environmental degradation. This expansion could put at least 135 million additional people at risk. Oil and gas projects are increasing across every continent, while the number of coal plants and mines continues to rise in countries like China and India.
- A human rights emergency
Communities that resist this destruction often face intimidation, harassment, or criminalization. From Brazil’s coastal fishing villages to the Wet’suwet’en lands in Canada, defenders protecting their homes and ecosystems are being targeted simply for saying no.
The findings are clear and alarming: the entire fossil fuel life cycle, from exploration to decommissioning, erodes human rights, deepens inequality, and destroys the ecosystems we all depend on for survival. Governments need to end this deliberate pattern of sacrifice once and for all.
COP30 cannot afford another half measure
After three decades of climate negotiations, fossil fuels still account for over 80 percent of global energy supply. Each COP has inched forward, yet the world seems to remain locked in the same system driving catastrophe. COP28 named the problem and broke new ground as governments pledged to “transition away from fossil fuels”. But COP29 failed to act on it. This COP must not be another missed opportunity.
Belém can and needs to set a new course, one grounded in justice and practicality. That means agreeing to a full, fast, and fair phase-out of fossil fuels:
- Full: COP30 must be the moment when world leaders agree to stop building new coal, oil, and gas projects, especially in fragile places like the Amazon.
- Fast: the phase-out must be aligned with the science calling for a 55% drop in production by 2035.
- Fair: A just transition must break from the colonial and extractivist models that caused this crisis. Wealthy nations, most responsible for past emissions, must move first and fastest, while supporting developing countries to build clean, people-powered energy systems. They must provide real finance and technology, not loans or empty promises. Governments should deliver the $1.3 trillion climate finance goal through grant-based, and debt-free funding.
This COP also takes place on Indigenous land instead of a petro-state as in the past two years. This is a region whose forests and rivers sustain the planet’s climate balance. As leaders in climate solutions, protecting 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity, Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge, rights, and leadership must be at the heart of any agreement in Belém. A just transition is impossible without their leadership.
The fossil fuel era has already written too many stories of loss and injustice. COP30 must be remembered as the moment when leaders moved from rhetoric to results, when they chose people over profit, science over denial, and solidarity over delay.
Join Amnesty International, 350.org and the Association of Men and Women of the Sea AHOMAR for the UNFCCC side event “It All Starts With Oil and It Can All End Because of It: The Cycle of Crisis” on Friday, 14 November, 10:30 AM at the Blue Zone for the report launch and a deep dive into how global fossil fuel exploitation causes human rights violations, environmental racism, and sacrifice zones across territories.