As public awareness of climate change and desire for action have both increased, corporations and their bought politicians have been working overtime to find ways to misinform the public, shift blame, and convince people that everything is under control, and no systemic change is needed. One of the tools that has been developed to help that effort is the concept of “net zero”. It’s a reasonable-sounding concept that could be perfectly valid, if we lived in a world run by honest people who want to do the right thing with their power.
Sadly, that’s not the world in which we live, so let’s take a closer look at this “net zero” thing: