What does Net Zero mean.

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I see lots of posts about Net Zero and I hear the people around me talking about it.

net zero means cutting greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible

Thank you for telling me. Now I know. I ask some pretty dumb questions, don't I?

There are no dumb questions

Not just cutting, but also offsetting the carbon emissions that can't be eliminated. That's what makes it net zero.

Carbon offsets don't actually DO anything...except make people feel good (and often PAY more) about doing something...like paper straws and banning plastics. If you look closely at offsets to make something "carbon-neutral" you often find unreported carbon emissions that can actually exceed what they are attempting to neutralize.

Last edited by DanielW on 09 Jan 2024, 3:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

While I agree with you, it's also kinda beside the point when defining nomenclature.

If the goal was literally zero emissions, that would be gross zero, not net zero.

Net Zero sounds like my bank account at the end of every month

It is ..! Green house emissions folks applied it differently .

The amount you add to your bank account would indeed be that...if your income exactly matched your outgo.

Like when my Walmart paycheck comes in ...and I have to hand over penny that doesnt go to rent to...my bookie for my gambling debts...the increase in my savings is "net zero".

The global carbon situation works the same. If every time they made a car they made a magic vacuum cleaner that sucked the same amount of carbon out of the air that the car emits...the increase would be "net zero".

It's true that carbon offsets don't work. Sometimes the attempt to remove CO2 actually increases the CO2 in the air. And even if they worked perfectly, these efforts are currently very very small in scale, not nearly enough to offset the current CO2 output from travel, industry, food production, etc.

Nevertheless, that is what Net Zero means. It involves a combination of reducing the greenhouse gases (which are not just CO2) that are produced in the first place (by replacing fossil fuels with green energy and overall reducing the consumption and production that creates those gases), while at the same time removing from the air the greenhouse gases that would still be produced, which in theory would result in no greenhouse gases, or Net Zero greenhouse gases.

I worked at WalMart for 25 months 20 years ago. My pay was just over federal minimum-wage.

The comparison to carbon emissions makes sense & is a nice ideal but I highly doubt ir will ever happen judging by the way humans keep fighting each other & half the leaders in the US denie climate change exisists or at least insisiss that it's unrelated to humans.