{"id":55007,"date":"2020-09-13T07:53:07","date_gmt":"2020-09-13T12:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55007"},"modified":"2020-09-13T07:53:07","modified_gmt":"2020-09-13T12:53:07","slug":"the-net-zero-emissions-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55007","title":{"rendered":"The Net Zero Emissions Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Net Zero Emissions Lie<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Cutting carbon emissions has become a central focus of countries and companies alike in the past decade. The oil majors are\u00a0racing to \u2018go green<\/a>, Microsoft has\u00a0pledged to go \u2018carbon negative\u2019<\/a>, and over 20 nations have either committed to or achieved\u00a0net-zero carbon targets<\/a>.\u00a0For public companies, the incentives to go green are clear, with a recent boom in\u00a0ESG investing<\/a>, the continued threat of\u00a0activist divestment<\/a>, and a growing body of government regulation. Meanwhile, for governments, the environment is becoming an\u00a0increasingly important electoral issue<\/a>\u00a0and political parties are eager to be seen as being proactive on the issue. But just as the ESG investment boom has led to an increase in the phenomenon of \u2018greenwashing\u2019, countries who are eager to make grand statements about being carbon zero within a decade or two may be overselling exactly what it is that they are doing.<\/p>\n

Climate change is, by its very nature, a global problem. With that in mind, it is possible for one country to reduce its carbon emissions to zero without any reduction in the level of carbon emitted worldwide. As long as that same country continues to trade and consume, the carbon-reliant products it needs will simply be imported from a nation without any limits on carbon emissions. To claim \u2018real\u2019 net-zero emissions, countries would have to go significantly further.<\/p>\n

That isn\u2019t to say that the net-zero initiatives are entirely without merit. Increasing renewable energy usage, building more energy-efficient homes, and electrifying transportation would all have a tangible effect on decreasing global carbon emissions. But, as economist Dieter Helm points out in\u00a0his recent book<\/a>, if an individual state wants to truly become a net-zero carbon emitter, then it would need to have a carbon tax at its border as well as reducing its production of carbon domestically.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Net Zero Emissions Lie Cutting carbon emissions has become a central focus of countries and companies alike in the past decade. The oil majors are\u00a0racing to \u2018go green, Microsoft has\u00a0pledged to go \u2018carbon negative\u2019, and over 20 nations have either committed to or achieved\u00a0net-zero carbon targets.\u00a0For public companies, the incentives to go green are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[112,113,1004,25985,30294,5332,5160],"class_list":["post-55007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-carbon","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-co2","tag-greenwashing","tag-josh-owens","tag-oilprice-com","tag-zero-emissions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55008,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55007\/revisions\/55008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}