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Tackling the climate crisis must not come at the expense of eradicating global hunger
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Date:None

With fewer than 90 days to go until the UK hosts the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, we can expect to hear a lot more about the much-heralded goal of reaching ‘net zero’ carbon emissions. While this goal is important, there is a risk that too many of these plans are implausible and may become a dangerous smokescreen that hides a lack of near-term action by governments and corporations.

Boris Johnson often presents the UK as the godfather of net zero, having been one of the first countries to pass a net zero target into law. But if the prime minister wants to deliver a deal that prevents climate catastrophe, he cannot afford for this to become a distraction from radical action to reduce emissions now.

To be clear, net zero targets are vital to tackling climate change and have unleashed a wave of much-needed energy and optimism. Barely a week goes by without a new country or company announcing a target to achieve net zero carbon emissions. More than 120 countries, including big emitters such as China, the US and the European Union, have pledged to achieve net zero by the middle of the century. A wave of companies and investors including British Airways, Mars, Unilever, Citigroup, BlackRock, Shell and BP have followed suit.

But what do these targets actually mean, and can they be trusted? Every net zero target is like a seesaw: it promises to balance the carbon still being released with measures to remove carbon from the air, at some point in the future. Currently the vast majority of countries and corporations are nowhere close to achieving that balance, but they assure us the weight is shifting.

The carbon removal part is the difficult bit. Setting aside all the virtually unproven new technologies that promise to suck carbon from the air, the only guaranteed known way to remove carbon is to use land to grow billions of trees and to store carbon in plants and soil. It is in this area that far too many governments and companies are pinning their hopes.
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