You gotta compare it to the counterfactual, don't you? Maybe it's not going up as steeply as it would've otherwise. Maybe it's not curving up as sharply. Maybe the models that project the degrees warming are more sophisticated than just whether the line is pointing up or down. In order to make a line start to go down, you gotta bend the curve first, and we have been doing that. There's a long way to go, but we haven't done nothing.

This is a bit simplistic, the general plan is to slow growth and then reduce aiming for net zero around 2050.

There's plenty of science looking at those trajectories and arguing about if we are on schedule and what needs to be done to stick to the schedule and if its enough.

But its a bit more sophisticated than, if the line isn't going down today, we should just give up.

Another weird thing is that, it's fairly easy to make fossil fuels less carbon intense to eke them out a bit longer e.g. don't flare or leak raw methane which is much worse than the carbon you'd get from burning it. That's a good change that actually increases fossil fuel production and that we currently subsidize doing the opposite in the US.