Climate change logic seems to escape too many
Sadly, it seems to be those most interested in climate change - in stopping it - who have the hardest time grasping the logic.
Only two European states have net zero military emissions target, data shows
We don’t want to have a “military net zero target”. That’s to get the basic idea of net zero wrong.
Just two of 30 European countries have set a date to stop their militaries from emitting planet-heating emissions, a Guardian analysis has found, raising concerns about the carbon cost of Europe’s coming rearmament wave.
Austria and Slovenia are the only countries whose defence ministries have committed to reaching net zero military emissions, according to an analysis of 30 European countries, with only about one-third having worked out the size of their carbon footprint.
The findings confirm a “longstanding blind spot” in assessments of global emissions, said Florian Krampe, who leads climate research at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).
Again, we do not want net zero military emissions.
Or, possibly, maybe we do want no military emissions, possibly we even want negative military emissions but we don’t want net zero emissions for a sector - any sector, military or not.
Leave aside the whole thing about whether climate change, should we do anything if and so on. Think just inside the logic already being outlined.
Net zero means that society as a whole does not add to - whatever claimed - problem by having emissions greater than sequestration. But the entire point is that it’s net at the level of society as a whole. So, say - and imagine - we’ve some carbon sinks in cow farming as soil is improved. That means we can still use jet ‘planes. Sure, sure, jet ‘planes are emittive. But net zero insists that that’s just fine as long as those emissions are offset by a sink, by sequestration, elsewhere - yummy hamburgers and steaks.
Even if Monbiot is right and steaks are not a carbon sink the logic still stands. The entire point of net zero is that the net is across all sectors. Not that each sector - or, to drill down further, each activity and then each action etc - is itself non-emittive. This allows us to have emissions in those activities or sectors where we must, or it’s very valuable to do so, or even because we’d like to. Exactly and precisely because all CO2 is the same, all climate change effects depends upon the gross volume of that CO2* and thus it is the net emissions of everything that matters.
To demand that a particular sector must be net zero is to miss the entire point of even considering net zero as a target. They’re not even grasping their own logic. Yet these are the people who insist upon designing our future world for us - aren’t we the lucky ones?
Tim Worstall
*Yes, yes, OK, CO2-e