Net-Zero: The War On Carbon (And Humans) Intensifies

By Technocracy News

Our planet and populations depend on the carbon lifecycle. Without carbon, life on earth would cease. Yet, the war on carbon is escalating by downplaying “carbon neutral” and replacing it with “net-zero” programs; namely, just quit emitting carbon, period.

The logical extension of this thinking would be to just get rid of all carbon-emitters or anything that breathes. The war on humanity is just that simple to understand.

Carbon neutrality means that the total amount of emissions is either eliminated, neutralized, or compensated. Net-zero is a target that doesn’t include compensation and puts more emphasis on avoiding carbon emissions. Many products, data centers, or companies are already carbon neutral, but few have reached net-zero.

Martin Lippert spoke about sustainability at OOP 2023 Digital.

There is no exact or clear definition of carbon neutral and net-zero, but we have a well-established common understanding of them, Lippert mentioned. He distinguished between two ways to deal with emissions- eliminating emissions and offsetting emissions:

Eliminating emissions means to not emit carbon into the atmosphere in the first place; you basically avoid creating carbon dioxide (or equivalent greenhouse gasses) and avoid emitting them into the atmosphere.

Offsetting carbon emissions means that you continue to emit carbon into the atmosphere, but you either compensate for those emissions (e.g. via carbon certificates) or you try to remove those emissions from the atmosphere again over time – which is often referred to as neutralizing emissions.

Lippert explained that carbon neutral means that the total amount of emissions is either eliminated (avoided), neutralized (removed again), or compensated (e.g. via carbon certificates) – or a combination of all three ways. But you don’t know which way was chosen to achieve carbon neutral – as long as the total sum is the same as the amount of carbon emissions that you caused, he added. So it might be the case that a company did not do anything to eliminate emissions, but solely bought certificates to compensate for those emissions. That would still result in a carbon neutral banner, Lippert said.