Net Zero by 2050 is Garbage Weasel Speak

They think we're mugs... don't buy what they're trying to sell

They’re note green… but you get the picture. Image in the public domain.

Do you remember the Volkswagen scandal? As reported all the way back in 2015, the EPA discovered that:

...many VW cars being sold in America had a "defeat device" - or software - in diesel engines that could detect when they were being tested, changing the performance accordingly to improve results.

The German car giant has since admitted cheating emissions tests in the US. When the cars were operating under controlled laboratory conditions - which typically involve putting them on a stationary test rig - the device appears to have put the vehicle into a sort of safety mode in which the engine ran below normal power and performance. Once on the road, the engines switched out of this test mode.

The result? The engines emitted nitrogen oxide pollutants up to 40 times above what is allowed in the US.

In order to evade emissions restrictions, a huge car manufacturer went to the trouble and expense of devising a sophisticated bit of programming that benefitted them financially while allowing them to crow about lower emissions without actually delivering on that promise.

VW’s chicanery was a classic example of greenwashing. The term was invented back in the 1980s to describe what the Cambridge Dictionary defines as:

Greenwash, verb: to make people believe that your company is doing more to protect the environment than it really is

Get ready. More greenwashing will be washing over us very soon. It will be part and parcel of a strategy by the biggest emitters to try and continue emitting while talking an oleaginous game about how they are now “partners” in the green revolution and “part of the solution,” when in fact they will not be.

In this Code Red Moment, after a year of Mother Nature banging on the door and bellowing “IT’S HERE, YOU FOOLS!” via Biblical flooding and horrific hurricanes and devastating wildfires, the C Suite guys at BP and ExxonMobil and Pemex and Chevron have read the IPCC Report and heard the voices from climate activists and they know they have to do something, now, to stave off taking any action.

The notion that powerful multi-national corporations were ever going to voluntarily play ball with us on the climate crisis is a quaint one. Corporate leaders are, however, waking up to the reality that they’re going to be politely asked to make some changes – and they realize that in this moment, it would be politically advantageous for them to appear to be playing along.

So it’s time for the big players in the extraction industries to hire a phalanx of honey-tongued PR professionals to craft some lovely, eco-friendly looking spin (preferably filmed in a rainforest in HD with a lush, shimmering score that sounds like Enya on steroids) and to craft a lot of obfuscatory bafflegab to use as talking points: carefully worded garbage about “innovation” and “investment” and “lowering cost” and “solutions” all couched with a lot of qualifiers like “could” and “in the future {no date specified].”

Here’s a sample of what ExxonMobil is up to. From their website:

Energy & Carbon Summary

ExxonMobil has a long history of responsibly meeting society‘s evolving need for energy in a reliable and sustainable manner. With a longstanding commitment to investments in technology and the ingenuity of our people, we are well positioned to continue to provide the energy that is essential to improving lives around the world, while managing the risks of climate change.

Investing in solutions

The company’s sustained investment in R&D plays an important role in helping to develop breakthrough solutions in areas such as carbon capture, biofuels, hydrogen and energy-efficient process technology.

• Investments primarily focused on reducing emissions from three sectors that emit 80 percent of all energy-related greenhouse gas emissions: power generation, industrial and commercial transportation.

• Invested in technology that could capture more than 90 percent of CO2 and prove up to six times more effective than conventional technology.

• Partnered with governments, academia and industry to research and commercialize biofuels, direct air capture and lower the cost of carbon capture and storage to help support society’s ambition of net-zero emissions by 2050.

• Since 2000, more than $10B has been invested to research, develop and deploy lower-emission energy solutions.

ALL OF THIS IS WEASEL SPEAK.

It’s greenwashing, posing as a good faith attempt to harness the power and technological innovation of the business sector to fight the good fight against global warming. All of it is delay tactics. All of it puts the dangerous “net zero emissions by 2050” concept front and center.

Many climate scientists know, and will tell you even when not asked, that “net zero by 2050” is not enough.

In particular, NASA scientist Dr. Peter Kalmus has demolished the trope very effectively. He says:

The world has by and large adopted “net zero by 2050” as its de facto climate goal, but two fatal flaws hide in plain sight within those 16 characters. One is “net zero.” The other is “by 2050.”

These two flaws provide cover for big oil and politicians who wish to preserve the status quo. Together they comprise a deadly prescription for inaction and catastrophically high levels of irreversible climate and ecological breakdown.

This deadline (2050) feels comfortably far away, encouraging further climate procrastination. Who feels urgency over a deadline in 2050? This is convenient for the world’s elected leaders, who typically have term limits of between three and five years, less so for anyone who needs a livable planet.

Meanwhile, “net zero” is a phrase that represents magical thinking rooted in our society’s technology fetish. Just presuppose enough hypothetical carbon capture and you can pencil out a plan for meeting any climate goal, even while allowing the fossil fuel industry to keep growing.

Alas, “net zero by 2050” is baked into the conversation now and is likely to be front and center in the discussion going forward. Recall that “net zero by 2050” was a key goal of the Biden Administration’s climate plan.

Building on and benefiting from that foundation, America’s 2030 target picks up the pace of emissions reductions in the United States, compared to historical levels, while supporting President Biden’s existing goals to create a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions economy by no later than 2050. There are multiple paths to reach these goals, and the U.S. federal, state, local, and tribal governments have many tools available to work with civil society and the private sector to mobilize investment to meet these goals while supporting a strong economy.

What would “effective action now” look like? What is being suggested to replace the concept of “net zero by 2050?” It’s all well and good to huff and puff about it not being enough – but what would be?

It’s not easy to find concrete solutions to slowing emissions more quickly spelled out in popular media. I suspect that’s because some of those solutions would not be popular ideas. They include:

• Halting all new oil and gas exploration and drilling

• Closing pipelines and dramatically ramping up production of solar and wind

• Finding and eradicating methane leaks in existing pipeline infrastructure

• Establishing fully and highly protected marine areas (MPAs)

• Immediately putting a high price on carbon

• Enacting legislation to make it illegal for companies to fail in meeting their emissions targets

• Rationing (yes, rationing)

Those actions require some level of sacrifice, and since sacrifice is not something that any self-respecting multi-national global behemoth corporation ever, ever, EVER wants to do, queue the frothy deluge of greenwashing in all its weaselly, caveat-bedecked, lying glory.

It’s up to us to call this garbage out for what it is every time we see it – and it’s up to us to alert the more trusting among us.

Many folks are somewhere on the scale of pretty-worried-to-utterly-fucking-horrified by what’s happening with the climate. They will be more than willing to let themselves be lulled by promising-sounding pledges and magical thinking about future tech that makes it sound comfortingly like big emitters have learned their lesson and are now doing the right thing.

It’s a calming thought, isn’t it? Huge, powerful interests that can do so much more than powerless little me, putting their shoulders to the wheel and making the sacrifices to their bottom line that will be needed to get us out of this mess. As calming as it is, it isn’t happening.

We must save ourselves. We must demand immediate, effective action from both government and the extraction industries. We need to put our fingers in our ears and whistle bravely to block out the siren songs being sung to lull us to sleep so we don’t notice that what is being trumpeted as “change” is actually just CO2-belching business as usual.

---

Thanks for reading!  Please let me know in the comments what else we can be doing — I know I have missed a lot!

Kira Thomsen-Cheek

@KiraOnClimate