Ten years ago, the idea of global warming and the role of greenhouse gases were still being debated in some corners. Were human actions really responsible for altering the climate? Were fossil fuels really the main culprit? Do whole societies really have to change the way they live and work? Do greenhouse gas emissions really have to be cut… to nothing?
Today, these questions have been answered: it's yes, yes, yes and yes. The consensus is that, for there to be even a chance of limiting average temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Centigrade by 2050, total emissions of CO2 (the principal but not the only greenhouse gas) need to fall by 45 per cent of 2010 levels by 2030, and reach net zero by 2050.
Many see this “net-zero” or “carbon neutral” approach as the only chance of meeting what might otherwise seem a hopelessly impractical 2050 zero target. It allows some emissions to continue – as long as they are balanced out by countermeasures or “offsets” that remove carbon from the atmosphere one way or another – while still sending a signal that huge change is essential.
Different tracks
Increasingly, scientists and others are arguing that the idea of zero – or net zero – emissions by 2050 is actually a trap or a false premise. This is not one argument, but many. There are various ways to frame objections to the idea of zero emissions target dates, and they are worth exploring.
Perhaps the simplest version of the anti-zero argument is that, if the 2050 target is net zero emissions for everybody, then it is bound to be missed. And if the target guarantees failure, then as soon as people and organisations begin to realise this, they will also begin to lose faith in the whole idea of limiting climate change.
One solution to that problem is to recognise that not every country can or even should follow the same carbon-reduction track. A recent paper from the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (an Indian thinktank that started life as an overseas centre of the US Brookings Institution) has proposed that there should be different carbon accounting procedures and different target dates according to resources and emissions.
For example, the centre points out that there are a billion people in sub-Saharan Africa who account for only 1 per cent of the world's carbon emissions – so they can hardly be expected to act as urgently as the rest of the world. The centre argues that, instead of always aiming for zero carbon by a date like 2050, it is better to “flatten the curve” – which may mean a country's emissions continue later than the target date, but they will be lower. And there is no reason why that should not apply to organisations too.
Beyond net zero
Another argument says that the problem here is not so much the idea of “zero” but of “net-zero” emissions. Most emissions targets allow for some kind of offsetting process ¬– so that emissions can continue as long as there is something to counteract them and reach net zero, such as creating new stores of carbon in forests or marshland or extracting carbon from the atmosphere using new carbon capture technologies. Around two-thirds of all global carbon emissions are now covered by reduction targets that are net zero rather than absolute zero.
These are good ideas – but if we set the carbon-zero date decades in the future we don't have to ask difficult questions about what these offsetting technologies are going to be and whether they work.
Many think they won't work. For example, the Lancaster Environment Centre, a UK university climate research centre, has recently argued that most prospective carbon reduction offsets are just that – distant possibilities. Worse, says the centre, using these offsets to support net-zero targets is merely encouraging people to avoid the incremental emissions reductions they could be making now, in the hope that science will come up with some kind of carbon capture miracle in the future.
What is happening here? Could it be that policymakers have become too fixated on the idea of zero? Perhaps we should remember that “zero” is a powerful and rather mysterious concept. The number zero is a relatively recent invention – many early peoples had no concept of zero as a number, and even today there is mathematical controversy over how to use a zero.
Of course, none of this means we should abandon carbon reduction targets or start believing there is no working strategy to limit climate change. But we really do need to work out what all those zeroes add up to.
