Paris: Faced with the prospect that climate change will fuel ever-deadly heat waves, rising seas and crop failures that will threaten the global food system, it seems that countries, corporations and cities are coming up with a plan. Have arrived: net zero.
The concept is simple: starting now, to ensure that by a certain date – usually 2050 – they absorb as much carbon dioxide as they release, thereby achieving carbon neutrality.
But scientists and watchdog groups are becoming increasingly concerned about vague net-zero pledges that offset short-term emissions reductions and privilege future technological breakthroughs.
“They’re not fit for purpose, none of them,” miles allen, director oxford at net zero University of Oxford Said about today’s carbon neutrality plans.
“You can’t compensate for the continued use of fossil fuels by planting trees for too long,” he told AFP. No one has acknowledged that in their net-zero plans, even the really ambitious ones. countries as well.”
India, a major emitter at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow last month, committed to working towards net-zero emissions for the first time, joining the likes of China, the United States and the European Union.
According to Net Zero Tracker (NZT), 90 percent of global GDP is now covered by some kind of net-zero scheme. But it said the vast majority is undefined.
take the offset. These occur when countries or companies deploy measures – such as tree planting or direct CO2 capture – to compensate for the emissions they produce. NZT found that 91 percent of country targets, and 48 percent of public company targets, also failed to specify whether offsets were included in their net-zero plans.
What’s more, it was found that less than a third (32 percent) of corporate net-zero targets are covered by what are known as “Scope 3 emissions”—they are from a company’s product, which are generally responsible for the vast majority of carbon pollution. given business.
Alberto Carrillo Pineda, Co-Founder Science Based Targets Initiative, which helps companies align their net-zero plans with what science says is essential to avoid catastrophic heating, said most decarbonization pledges “make sense” without including Scope 3 emissions. do not know”.
“It matters from a climate standpoint, companies are driving emissions not only through their operations, but through what they buy and sell,” he told AFP.
“And that constitutes their business model. A company would not exist without their product and therefore their product needs to be considered from an emissions standpoint.”
United Nations climate change body, UNFCCC, analyzed the latest national emissions reduction plans during COP26.
It found they would see a 13.7 percent increase in emissions by 2030, when they would have to drop by almost half to keep within reach of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming limit.
Of the 74 countries that have published detailed net-zero plans, the UNFCCC found that their emissions will fall 70-79 percent by 2050 – a significant drop, but still not net zero.
Stuart Parkinson, executive director of the Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR), said governments have begun to use net-zero promises to delay immediate action on the environment.
“From our point of view, this is completely irresponsible,” he said.
“It’s bringing the problem to the tall grass and relying on speculative efforts in technology when we know we can change behavior and reduce emissions now and then.”
UN Secretary General last month Antonio Guterres An independent group will be set up to monitor the net-zero progress of the companies.
Many countries and businesses are planning to deploy large-scale deforestation as part of net-zero plans. Experts say this is problematic for two reasons.
The first is simple science: Earth’s plants and soils already absorb enormous amounts of man-made CO2 and there are signs that carbon sinks such as tropical forests are reaching saturation points.
“The concern is that the biosphere is turning itself from a sink to a source by heating itself,” Allen said.
“So it’s really hard to rely on the biosphere to store fossil carbon when we might need all the nature-based solutions we can find to keep the biosphere’s carbon content constant.”
Teresa anderson, ActionAid International’s senior policy director, said relying on land-based carbon sequestration was “setting the earth for a harsh awakening”.
But this concept is also problematic from the standpoint of human rights and fairness.
“When it comes to planting trees and competing for land for bioenergy, it’s going to affect low-income communities that have done the least amount of work to create a problem,” Anderson told AFP.
And because humans have already burned through most of the carbon budget—that is, how much total carbon pollution can we generate before 1.5C breaks—there’s simply no time to delay.
This year the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that since 1850, humans had emitted about 2400 billion tons of CO2 equivalent. There’s just 460 billion tons left before 1.5C breaks down – about 11 years at current emissions rates.
Pineda said that while hundreds of companies have made net-zero pledges, “very few” have concrete long-term plans to decarbonise.
“We need to be skeptical about any targets that don’t have clear milestones about how the company is going to halve emissions by 2030,” he said.
“Any net-zero goal without a 2030 milestone is basically unachievable.”
The concept is simple: starting now, to ensure that by a certain date – usually 2050 – they absorb as much carbon dioxide as they release, thereby achieving carbon neutrality.
But scientists and watchdog groups are becoming increasingly concerned about vague net-zero pledges that offset short-term emissions reductions and privilege future technological breakthroughs.
“They’re not fit for purpose, none of them,” miles allen, director oxford at net zero University of Oxford Said about today’s carbon neutrality plans.
“You can’t compensate for the continued use of fossil fuels by planting trees for too long,” he told AFP. No one has acknowledged that in their net-zero plans, even the really ambitious ones. countries as well.”
India, a major emitter at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow last month, committed to working towards net-zero emissions for the first time, joining the likes of China, the United States and the European Union.
According to Net Zero Tracker (NZT), 90 percent of global GDP is now covered by some kind of net-zero scheme. But it said the vast majority is undefined.
take the offset. These occur when countries or companies deploy measures – such as tree planting or direct CO2 capture – to compensate for the emissions they produce. NZT found that 91 percent of country targets, and 48 percent of public company targets, also failed to specify whether offsets were included in their net-zero plans.
What’s more, it was found that less than a third (32 percent) of corporate net-zero targets are covered by what are known as “Scope 3 emissions”—they are from a company’s product, which are generally responsible for the vast majority of carbon pollution. given business.
Alberto Carrillo Pineda, Co-Founder Science Based Targets Initiative, which helps companies align their net-zero plans with what science says is essential to avoid catastrophic heating, said most decarbonization pledges “make sense” without including Scope 3 emissions. do not know”.
“It matters from a climate standpoint, companies are driving emissions not only through their operations, but through what they buy and sell,” he told AFP.
“And that constitutes their business model. A company would not exist without their product and therefore their product needs to be considered from an emissions standpoint.”
United Nations climate change body, UNFCCC, analyzed the latest national emissions reduction plans during COP26.
It found they would see a 13.7 percent increase in emissions by 2030, when they would have to drop by almost half to keep within reach of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming limit.
Of the 74 countries that have published detailed net-zero plans, the UNFCCC found that their emissions will fall 70-79 percent by 2050 – a significant drop, but still not net zero.
Stuart Parkinson, executive director of the Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR), said governments have begun to use net-zero promises to delay immediate action on the environment.
“From our point of view, this is completely irresponsible,” he said.
“It’s bringing the problem to the tall grass and relying on speculative efforts in technology when we know we can change behavior and reduce emissions now and then.”
UN Secretary General last month Antonio Guterres An independent group will be set up to monitor the net-zero progress of the companies.
Many countries and businesses are planning to deploy large-scale deforestation as part of net-zero plans. Experts say this is problematic for two reasons.
The first is simple science: Earth’s plants and soils already absorb enormous amounts of man-made CO2 and there are signs that carbon sinks such as tropical forests are reaching saturation points.
“The concern is that the biosphere is turning itself from a sink to a source by heating itself,” Allen said.
“So it’s really hard to rely on the biosphere to store fossil carbon when we might need all the nature-based solutions we can find to keep the biosphere’s carbon content constant.”
Teresa anderson, ActionAid International’s senior policy director, said relying on land-based carbon sequestration was “setting the earth for a harsh awakening”.
But this concept is also problematic from the standpoint of human rights and fairness.
“When it comes to planting trees and competing for land for bioenergy, it’s going to affect low-income communities that have done the least amount of work to create a problem,” Anderson told AFP.
And because humans have already burned through most of the carbon budget—that is, how much total carbon pollution can we generate before 1.5C breaks—there’s simply no time to delay.
This year the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that since 1850, humans had emitted about 2400 billion tons of CO2 equivalent. There’s just 460 billion tons left before 1.5C breaks down – about 11 years at current emissions rates.
Pineda said that while hundreds of companies have made net-zero pledges, “very few” have concrete long-term plans to decarbonise.
“We need to be skeptical about any targets that don’t have clear milestones about how the company is going to halve emissions by 2030,” he said.
“Any net-zero goal without a 2030 milestone is basically unachievable.”
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