The goal of a "net zero economy" - based on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (mainly CO2) to the lowest possible level, within limits that ensure their absorption, in order to balance economic development with the conservation of natural resources - represents one of the most recognised strategies for achieving environmental sustainability. Such an objective seems to bring together actors who represent even very different interests, such as governments, international organisations, companies, the scientific and academic world and NGOs. This theoretical contribution advances a radical critique of this strategy, exposing its ideological character and its role in maintaining the structures of capitalist accumulation. Integrating insights from the International Political Economy (IPE) of climate change and the Global Libidinal Economy (GLE), the concept of 'carbon fetishism' is developed and its psychological basis discussed using categories from Lacanian psychoanalysis. It shows how this concept allows the complexity of climate change to be simplified into quantifiable metrics such as CO2 equivalents, obscuring exploitative relations of production and deferring systemic transformation. In particular, the author critiques net-zero practices, highlighting their reliance on speculative offsets and market mechanisms, and calls for a repoliticisation of environmental relations. By integrating psychoanalytic and Marxian critiques, the author contends that addressing climate change requires not merely defetishising carbon but reconfiguring libidinal investments to foster alternative ecological and political imaginaries. The spaces of possibility and the ways in which such alternatives can be fostered, both symbolically and in terms of concrete practices of transformation, will also be discussed.