Some have welcomed these public-facing commitments as positive indicators that the private sector is heeding to public pressure, but the scientific community says a lack of universal accounting standards results in most of these promises being ineffective, unjust and the latest form of “greenwashing” from corporate America.
Scientists are urging that at this point, with the impacts of climate change already manifesting, the “net” part of these “net-zero” announcements are coming too late and have shifted the focus from reducing emissions to simply “offsetting” them with nature- or tech-based solutions that simply don’t yet exist at the scale necessary to meet the need.
With businesses and industry contributing to an outsized share of greenhouse gas emissions, it’s going to take more than individual lifestyle changes to tackle the crisis.
This research led to the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, which sought to limit warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably to 1.5 degrees, compared to pre-industrial levels by drastically reducing emissions.
More recent data from the U.N., however, suggests that at the current rate of emissions , we would surpass our carbon budget necessary to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in approximately eight years.
A world warmed by just the 1.5 degrees Celsius benchmark would already look vastly different than today, the IPCC has warned, with some 70 to 90% of coral reefs projected to be gone at that temperature . Moreover, a warming of just 1.5 degrees Celsius “is not considered ‘safe’ for most nations, communities, ecosystems and sectors and poses significant risks to natural and human systems,” the IPCC has stated, saying some of the worst impacts are expected to be felt among agricultural and coastal-dependent communities.
“First of all, a net-zero target can be applied to either carbon dioxide or all greenhouse gases. Very often, that’s not really clearly specified,” he told ABC News, adding the scope of the pledges can also refer to just the tail-end emissions versus the sum of all the activities along the supply chain and distribution of products or services a company delivers.
At the core of net-zero emission pledges is the concept of offsetting emissions, but scientists warn that the nature-based proposals are limited and fraught with potential environmental justice issues and the technology-based proposals haven’t nearly caught up with the scale and pace of emissions.
“It’s not that people are inherently evil,” he added of those looking for offsets.
“Net-zero targets globally are a zero-sum game,” Rogelj said.