International cooperation on climate change mitigation has been insufficient to put the world on track to meet the Paris Agreement’stemperature goal, and some interpretations of ‘net zero’ do not help because they do not achieve what net zero was intended to achieve: climate stabilisation. Nature’s capacity to offset warming is less than is often assumed, so reliance on policies such as tree planting could make the temperature goal even more distant; other approaches, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage,risk compromising food production. The recently developed concept of ‘geological net zero’ enables a better alignment of policy and temperature outcomes. In this context, judicious use of carbon capture and storage as a backstop technology would avoid over-taxing natural sinks and, given appropriate regulatory design, could become an essential tool in achieving temperature targets.