Dr. Soheil Shayegh stood beneath the vaulted ceilings of Politecnico di Milano last week, surrounded by over 260 scientists united by a single urgent mission: to chart a path for pulling carbon dioxide from the sky at a scale never before imagined. The conference, the fourth in a growing global dialogue on carbon dioxide removal (CDR), brought together forest ecologists, oceanographers, soil scientists, and policy experts from 38 countries—not to replace emissions cuts, but to confront the stark reality that even aggressive decarbonization won’t be enough to keep global warming within safe limits. As 2024 became the first year to breach 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the need for CDR has shifted from theoretical possibility to practical necessity. The numbers are unrelenting: current global CDR capacity removes just 2.2 billion tonnes of CO2 annually, but to align with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal, that figure must soar to 8.8 billion tonnes by 2050—a fourfold increase in less than three decades. “We need to see an upscaling in ambition over the next few years to get on a track consistent with these long-term scenarios,” warned Dr. Morgan Edwards, lead author of the recently published “State of CDR Report,” her words echoing through the auditorium. The challenge isn’t just technological—it’s ecological and political. Prof. Sabine Fuss of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research stressed that many CDR methods, particularly forest-based solutions, may falter under the very climate stresses they aim to mitigate. “A lot of [CDR approaches] may not be super resilient if we’re facing higher temperatures and more disturbances. Think about forests,” she said. The conference also marked a turning point in how scientists view climate overshoot. Once a fringe concept, it’s now central to climate modeling. Prof. Massimo Tavoni of the RFF-CMCC European Institute described the current era as an “age of reckoning,” where all new climate scenarios assume some level of temperature overshoot. Of the latest CMIP7 emissions pathways, half exceed 1.5°C before relying on massive CDR deployment to bring temperatures back down—making carbon removal not just a supplement, but a cornerstone of future climate stability. This isn’t just climate science—it’s Earth restoration on a planetary scale.