Why some experts say corporate 'net-zero' emissions pledges could have net-zero impact on climate crisis:
"Net-zero pledges delay the action that needs to happen," Diana Ruiz, a senior campaigner at the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace USA, one of the statement's signatories, told ABC News."What we've seen is more of the abuse of these pledges by corporations to allow them to continue to pollute and and continue business as usual."
Greenpeace's Ruiz, said they ultimately view net-zero pledges as a way for corporations"to greenwash their pollution by using carbon offsets and other false climate solutions." "Personally, my job was and has been for most of the time to devise mathematical models," he said, adding that in these models,"the 'net' exists as an abstract idea, but what it means in reality, that didn't actually affect these models at all by the way they were constructed."
"That 'zero' has sort of disappeared from sight, and it's all about the 'net,'" he added."I think that I might have contributed to this."In its most-recent 2021 report, the IPCC simply defines"net-zero" as a"condition in which anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are balanced by anthropogenic CO2 removals over a specified period," though details on this"removals" process remain sparse.
Rogelj said ultimately, the science shows that rather than offsetting, the focus should be on deep reductions of emissions in the first place. What has emerged, however, is"companies that basically are not focusing on reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, but rather are buying very cheap offset credits, not all of which are very reliable or trustworthy."
"That's often called avoidance offsetting, and it's really important to stress because it's often not very clear," he said, arguing that this system needs to be entirely done away with.
"Nature-based offsetting that relies heavily on land use in the Global South and in Indigenous lands risks shifting responsibility for emissions made by Global North countries to those already struggling with the impacts of the climate crisis and are least responsible for it," she wrote from COP26. "It doesn't matter if a rich person or a poor person emits or cuts down, carbon is a global externality or pollutant," he said."So by saying all carbon is equal, that's what offsets are intellectually driven by, that lets someone richer pay for the offset in a poor country."
Ultimately, with the damage already done, Knorr said this"net" or"offset" faze is"quite tangential in the current debate," admitting that"to a large degree we have failed, also as scientists for example, for not calling that out."Tongia said that in his research, these offsets seem to have emerged in the private sector as short-term solutions while tackling the climate crisis needs to have a much broader approach.
Rogelj and his colleagues established a"checklist" for how consumers can hold leaders accountable with their net-zero plans.The scope asks what global temperature goal does the plan contribute to, what is the target date for net-zero, which greenhouse gases are considered, what is the extent of the emissions, what are the relative contributions of offsets and how will risks around offsets be managed.
"Besides net-zero pledges, it is absolutely essential that the private sector sets targets that are measurable over the near term, and targets that really show the trajectory on which a company or a sector is evolving towards a long-term pledge," Rogelj said."Setting pledges for three decades in the future, and not working towards them, is simply greenwash."
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