IMAGINE constantly living on a maxed-out credit card. The bills continue to arrive; the interest consistently compounds, and yet you keep spending as if the limit does not exist.
This is what many nations are doing to the air that we depend on to sustain all forms of life. The scientific term for this is ecological overshoot, where our activities emit more carbon than the planet can absorb. In other words, we are spending ecological capital faster than the planet can replace it.
Climate scientists describe this limit using the concept of a carbon budget. It is the remaining amount of carbon dioxide humanity can emit while still having a reasonable chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.
That budget is finite but we are already burning through it at alarming speed. Many countries, particularly long industrialised ones, have already used far more than their fair share. The prevailing idea that climate responsibility lies only with the Global North no longer holds. Emerging economies now face the same question: how much of the carbon budget have they used?
In 2024, Malaysia ranked 28th for total annual greenhouse gas emissions, comparable with highly extractive economies like Spain and France. Much of this comes from heavy reliance on fossil fuels for power, rising transport demands, and other energy-hungry industries.
So what does this mean for Malaysia’s share of the atmospheric budget? A new report by environmental think-tank RimbaWatch released last month takes a close look at this question. It estimates Malaysia’s fair share of the global carbon budget using several widely-used approaches, including equality, historical responsibility and capacity.
The findings are sobering. Under several of these approaches, many already generous in their assumptions, Malaysia has likely already exhausted its fair share of the remaining 1.5°C.
This does not mean development must stop. But it does mean that every additional tonne emitted today pushes the world further past the safe limit. The consequences are not abstract.
Extreme heat is already making people more ill, driving up heart and lung ailments, strokes, and even Alzheimer’s disease. Dangerous infections are spreading into new areas due to climate change. As hospitals struggle to cope with the rising costs, the damage could start to eat away at economic progress.
In this context, Malaysia could start thinking about a national “peak emissions day”. Just as Earth Overshoot Day marks the point when humanity uses up the planet’s annual ecological resources, peak emissions day would mark the moment Malaysia’s pollution stops rising and starts falling. The sooner that day arrives, the more believable our climate promises will be.
In a world already pushing past planetary limits, credibility will not come from targets to be met 25 years from now. It will come from cutting emissions now, this month, this year, this decade.
When a credit card is maxed out, the responsible way to pay it off is not denial, it is discipline and prudence. The same logic applies to climate policy.
First, we need hard, well-policed carbon limits in our climate policies.
A national carbon budget, written into the forthcoming Climate Change Act, would turn climate science into clear legal limits, not just distant promises. Those limits would then need to be broken down across key sectors such as energy, transport, and industry, so that each knows how much pollution it must cut.
Second, our politicians and businesses need to avoid locking the country into new long-term fossil fuel projects.
Analysis by the Global Energy Monitor shows new oil and gas fields take more than 15 years to move from discovery to production. That means projects approved today will keep pumping emissions for decades. In a world that is moving away from fossil fuels, this is a massive financial gamble and an untenable climate risk.
Malaysia should follow through on its plan to exit coal by 2035 and make sure it meets its promise to phase out gas by 2045.
Clear timelines like these give markets the certainty needed to shift investment, modernise the grid, and rapidly and confidently scale renewable energy.
The transition requires doing two things at once: cutting dependence on fossil fuels while quickly building new systems that keep energy secure, affordable, and reliable.
Finally, the transition must protect people.
Workers and communities tied to high-carbon sectors cannot simply be left behind. A just transition with reskilling, social protection, and economic diversification must accompany climate action.
Encouragingly, Malaysia has already taken an important step through the National Planetary Health Action Plan.
This plan starts from a simple idea: the health of people, the strength of the economy, and the stability of nature are all connected. It also helps turn climate science into practical priorities. That means protecting health, reducing exposure to climate risks, strengthening frontline communities, and making sure that the costs of transition are shared fairly.
Just as importantly, the plan makes clear that the government must work together.
Carbon budgeting, energy reform, health protection, and climate adaptation cannot sit in separate silos. They have to move as part of one national effort if Malaysia is to protect both people and prosperity in a hotter and more unstable world.
If Malaysia has already used up, or even exceeded, its fair share of the atmosphere, then the challenge is clear. Do we keep stealing the carbon inheritance of future generations, or do we start living within the limits that science has set?
The carbon budget shows us how much space we have left. What we do next will decide whether Malaysia’s climate leadership is taken seriously now and in the years ahead.
Prof Tan Sri Dr Jemilah Mahmood, a physician and experienced crisis leader, is the executive director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University. She is the founder of Mercy Malaysia and has served in leadership roles internationally with the United Nations and Red Cross for the last decade. She writes on Planetary Health Matters once a month in Ecowatch. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.
