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Just to be clear this might work at organisational and individual levels but not at a global system level where net zero or net negative human emissions is the only viable way to limit the damage and begin to repair.
I do agree with you rule of thumb at lower scales though as there's too much accounting mitigation which can directly oppose system wide net zero (i.e. by buying up small bits of negative emissions that need to happen anyway whilst not mitigating your own emissions).
@zerakith To be clear here, I am talking primarily here about corporate or organisational level here.
By net versus gross, I mean the difference between continuing to pollute, but "offsetting" that pollution, versus getting their gross pollution as close to zero as possible.
There's many orgs and businesses out there claiming to have a plan to reach, or have reached, net zero (or net negative).
And in many cases, what they're talking about is basically their direct emissions (scope one) and offsite energy (scope two). Not their supply chain (scope three).
And what they really mean is that they'll continue to pollute, and just buy the cheapest carbon offsets available. In many cases, those cheapest available offsets are of dubious value.
That all sounds great in a press release.
But what's a lot better is to continually measure and reduce gross emissions across scope one, two, and three, getting them as low as possible.
At a global system-wide level, I would argue we would be in a far better position if we had more businesses, organisations, and governments looking to achieve gross zero than net zero.
I agree and I didn't think you did mean at the global level but I think its important to be clear because a lot of comms is (deliberately?) vague on which scale and who is being talked about. I think a lot of people do get confused about it and I think its used a lot to bamboozle and greenwash.
I'm not sure of the solution but I do think more needs to be done at the GHG protocol level to stop accepting fixes (like buying up some land that's a net negative) that don't actually shift the global picture. Sadly, I've seen some well meaning people and organisations do just that and its hard to blame them. If someone is offering you an option that minimises the disruption and you don't know the detail of why its problematic you will take it. We need a way of going back down from to global level pathways to more local organisations so we can see clearly they aren't just buying up more than their fair share of mitigating options.
"Net-zero" is just anther way of saying "We cooked the data to shit, this is greenwashing"