Net Zero's Rising Tide
Net zero carbon emissions from the perspective of a drowning voter: now isn't soon enough.
Rishi Sunak this week announced an overhaul of the policies designed to help the UK meet its legally binding target of cutting its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, easing and delaying a series of measures aimed at meeting the target.
This is shameful, but Net Zero is its own kind of nonsense anyway. Yes, let's reduce emissions as much as we can — but the concept of net zero has given people the impression that if this target is achieved, some external goal will have been met, some threshold will not have been crossed, consequently we will be spared some calamity, and this calamity can be avoided by judicious planning. But 69% of wildlife has been lost in the last 50 years: the calamity is already here. Every wisp of CO2 we add to the atmosphere poisons the environment and worsens the lives of our descendants for generations to come - many generations to come.
The concept of 'net zero' involves a sort of category error, as if achieving this target were simply a desirable outcome on a par with other desirable outcomes ("winning votes behind the red wall" ©Rishi Sunak), to be achieved through yet more planning, calculation and trade-offs.
Consider: you are trapped in a sealed box; water is rising inexorably, filling the box; one person gently scoops water out of the box while another is frantically pouring water back in. The difference between the water poured in and that scooped out is what the box managers call its "net water insertion".
The water has now risen above your nose, you are already thrashing around, trying to turn your mouth to suck at the air left in the top of the unit... precisely how soon would you like us to achieve net zero water insertions?