The good news? The climate crisis is finally taking center stage. The bad news? Net zero, if it consists of hollow pledges, will not solve it.
Action during this decade to reduce carbon emissions is crucial to protect the planet from global warming. The Paris Agreement calls for an 80 percent of reduction of carbon emissions by 2030 on a 2005 baseline to prevent global warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
Many companies also put forward climate pledges they plan to make by 2050, which is too far out given what current science calls for; action this decade is crucial.
Academics, activists, nongovernmental organizations, policymakers, and scientists alike have expressed concerns that net zero pledges from governments and corporations do not add up to achieve the pledges of the Paris Agreement. The industries include agriculture and aviation, finance and fossil fuels, as well as retail and technology.
In January 2021, the Sierra Club published a report highlighting how the climate pledges of utility companies in the United States do not meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. Last fall, Oil Change International published a report supported by numerous other organizations presenting how the commitments of the oil industry do not hold water.
Companies often use accounting tricks to meet their climate commitments. These tricks include carbon offsets, such as tapping trees or oceans, or new technological innovations, such as carbon removal schemes.
In April 2021, Robert Watson, previously chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, co-authored an article with two other scientists, which called net zero “a dangerous trap” set by governments and corporations and “a blank cheque for the continued burning of fossil fuels and the acceleration of habitat destruction.”
The problem with net zero is that it focuses on offsets, rather than carbon emissions reductions. It allows carbon emissions to continue, and it allows business as usual to continue.
It is a delay tactic that the fossil fuel industries have mastered (see also: climate denial).
As many activists have been arguing for decades, to avert current global warming requires “system change not climate change.”
Another issue of concern regarding emissions pledges is the lack of interim targets. If the goal is to reduce emissions by X amount by, say 2030, what is the benchmark for progress for 2022, for 2023, etc., and who is going to check it?
Many companies also put forward climate pledges they plan to make by 2050, which is too far out given what current science calls for; action this decade is crucial.
A newly released report titled “The Big Con: How Big Polluters Are Advancing a ‘Net Zero’ Climate Agenda to Delay, Deceive, and Deny,” was published by Corporate Accountability, Friends of the Earth International, and the Global Forest Coalition. The report was endorsed by more than sixty environmental organizations including the Institute for Policy Studies, OilWatch, and the Third World Network.
The report calls attention to what it calls “big polluters’ dangerous distractions,” which include “geoengineering technologies and deeply flawed schemes.” The technologies include biomass or bioenergy, deriving energy from natural sources, including the burning of trees; and Carbon Capture and Storage, sucking up CO2 from the air and storing it in the ground.
Co-author Coraina De la Plaza, climate campaigner for Global Forest Coalition, says: “We are deeply concerned about the corporate capture of climate policies and finance, and the growing nexus between governments and corporations to promote false solutions through net zero. Instead of deep emissions cuts, they continue to pursue ‘green’ neocolonial offsetting schemes to reap more profits and pollute through forest offsets, afforestation, reforestation, tree plantations, and dangerous techno-fixes. This net zero circus has to stop: the planet and people need real and ambitious targets and commitments, real emissions.”
People in so-called developing countries, many of which have already been disproportionately experiencing the effects of climate change, are impacted more intensely by carbon offset projects as they are pushed off land for tree plantations.
As Meena Raman, with endorsing organization Third World Network put it: “As big polluters hide behind false claims of supporting climate action, they are planning to do more damage by pushing carbon offset projects in developing countries, leading to more forest and land grabs. Such efforts promote climate injustice and will impact the poor communities and indigenous peoples in the Global South. This has to stop.”
It does. The question is how.
Globally, there is not enough land available to accommodate the plans of governments and corporations to plant trees as offsets. “Net zero” also exacerbates global and historical inequities. It allows nations and corporations in the global north to continue to burn fossil fuels while using forests and land in the Global South as a carbon sink.
“Proclamations of Net Zero targets are dangerous deceptions,” says Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development. “Net Zero sounds ambitious and visionary but it actually allows big polluters and rich governments to continue emitting [greenhouse gasses], which they claim will be erased through unproven and dangerous technologies, carbon trading, and offsets that shift the burden of climate action to the Global South.”
As she sees it, “Big polluters and rich governments should not only reduce emissions to Real Zero, they must pay reparations for the huge climate debt owed to the Global South.”
So what is the solution?
Emissions need to be cut to a real zero, not a net zero. Additionally, climate justice and social justice, meaning both historical and present-day, need to be centered. That means nations and corporations disproportionately responsible for emissions should take historical inequities into account and make even more ambitious, commensurate efforts to reduce emissions. The report reminds “Just 100 corporations are responsible for 70 percent of historical emissions.”
Lastly, wealthier nations and countries should fund efforts of nations and communities experiencing the impacts the most but least able financially to address them. Obviously, neither of the latter two efforts should count towards the need to cut emissions to what’s needed: real zero.
“People around the globe have already made their demands clear,” notes the “Big Con” report. “Leaders can listen to the people and once and for all prioritize people’s lives and the planet over engines of profit and destruction. To avoid social and planetary collapse, they must heed the calls of millions of people around the globe and pursue policies that justly, equitably transition our economies off of fossil fuels and advance real solutions that prioritize life—now.”