The net of net zero is composed of restored nature which will take back the fossil carbon that BP sucks from beneath the earth and burns into the sky. And then there’s the net zero from Shell and Total, from every mining house, from cement and steel makers, from shining corporate buildings, from Bunge and the supermarket giants, from ships and aeroplanes, from Humvees, tanks, gunships and rockets to Mars…
“Net Zero” is the mantra for global corporates who at least want to pretend to have a climate response and some who see that the end of the road is nigh. It is now faithfully echoed in South African boardrooms and repeated even in Cabinet rooms. It signals a new spring season in society’s response to the climate crisis following the long winter of misinformation, obstruction, obfuscation, secrecy, lies and bully tactics that are the stuff of business as usual.
Anyone scrutinising the global carbon accounts may think 2050 a little late. But never mind the date. What is “net zero”? “Not zero”, says Kevin Anderson. He’s the deputy director of the UK’s leading climate science institution, the Tyndall Centre. So investors and other policymakers might take note.
In the period 1850 to 2010, emissions from “land use change” – that is, from the all-out assault on forests, wetlands, grasslands and all – has put over 660 gigatonnes COfrom burning fossil fuels. Restoring earth is certainly necessary – but it only restores some of the carbon lost in “land use change”. This is above ground carbon. It does not “offset” continued emissions of fossil carbon from below.
And then there’s carbon capture and storage. This “requires significant upfront investment”, says BP, and hence, “government funding and supportive policy will be crucial to making [it] economically viable”. Not a subsidy, mind. And never mind if it never really works. Like Christmas, it’s the thought that counts.
The carbon markets promoted by the oil majors, mining majors, finance majors and just about every other major, nevertheless demand the equivalence of all carbon. Everything is fungible on the capital markets. Including nature. This is the original fraud which, like sin, we must remember to forget. As it is, the assault on the forests is accelerating with carbon losses of some five Gt each year. Big agriculture is burning the tropical forests of the Amazon and of Indonesia. Not least, to grab land for the biofuel crops that Shell and BP want. More wildfires are burning on all continents. And the permafrost melting under Rosneft’s pipelines is disgorging carbon directly into the air. So restoration may be hard put to keep up with the ongoing loss of terrestrial carbon as nature breaks up.
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