Leading climate scientists James Dyke, Robert Watson, and Wolfgang Knorr are sounding an alarm that net zero carbon emissions is a flawed vision. For The Conversation, they trace how the idea of mitigating emissions while continuing to burn fossil fuels took hold in the 1980s, evolved in the Ryo summit and Kyoto Protocol, and reified in The Paris Agreement. They argue for immediate, drastic action, as a market-like economy of offsets, inadequate capture and storage methods and unrealistic reforestation models are magical thinking “driven by a need to protect business as usual, not the climate.”