“Net zero” was once the stated goal of the governing authorities vis a vis carbon emission restrictions.
A new goalpost, however, “absolute zero,” is increasingly common in Climate Change™ rhetoric.
Related: Study: The Science™ Pins Climate Change™ on Human Breathing
You know what they say about giving inches and taking miles.
Via NetZeroClimate.org:
Net zero refers to a state in which the greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere are balanced by removal out of the atmosphere.
The term net zero is important because – for CO2 at least – this is the state at which global warming stops…
Different terms (Carbon Neutral, Net Zero, Climate Neutral) point to different ways in which emissions sources and sinks are accounted for in context. They help to indicate what is and is not included in the calculation or a target. Net zero is the internationally agreed upon goal for mitigating global warming in the second half of the century. The IPCC concluded the need for net zero CO2 by 2050 to remain consistent with 1.5C. So, the purpose of this site is to inform effective climate action that is net zero aligned in order to advance progress towards this goal.
Many actors will be able to achieve absolute zero or zero emissions, hence the choice of terms in the global ‘Race to Zero’ campaign focused on raising ambition. Others will need to scale up removals either themselves directly or by supporting other projects.
This is how “absolute zero” is defined, with a chilling addendum attached to the definition (emphasis added):
No [greenhouse gas] emissions are attributable to an actor’s activities across all scopes. Under this definition, no offsets or balancing of residual emissions with removals are used.
A valid end-state target.
So, if “net zero” is the point at which any man-made carbon emissions are offset by the Earth’s natural removal of carbon (a process which was around long, long before the combustion engine), and reducing man-made carbon contributions is the entire justification for “net zero,” what is the justification for “absolute zero” — which would ostensibly mean removing all carbon (which is essential for life) from the atmosphere?
For now, most of the references to “absolute zero” I can find are either (intentionally) vague or explicit references to industrial machinations. But there is nothing stopping the technocrats from setting their “absolute zero” sights on biological emitters of carbon.
In fact, they already are.
Related: Letitia James vs. Beef: The War on Food
You know, biological emitters of carbon like… people.
The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent…
Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year — over 26 billion tons… And somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero… This equation has four factors, a little bit of multiplication…
So you’ve got a thing on the left, CO2, that you want to get to zero, and that’s going to be based on the number of people, the services each person is using on average, the energy, on average, for each service, and the CO2 being put out per unit of energy. So let’s look at each one of these, and see how we can get this down to zero. Probably, one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero. [audience laughter]
-Bill Gates, World’s Leading Biomedical Terrorist, 2010
