What Does Net Zero Mean?

What’s Your Definition of Net Zero?

Let’s get one thing clear from the outset, ‘net zero’ does not mean zero (gross zero). It means almost anything you want it to mean.

This is government CO2 emission data for the UK since 1800 & a huge reason to give ourselves a massive pat on the back. Look at us, all helping the planet to be a better place. We must be, the government say so after all.

Except for the small inconvenient fact that this graph is utter nonsense. It is a massive lie, a con, a hoax, it is not true.

What is true is that across the past 20 years or so we have exported jobs to the far east. Mostly to China, but also to India, Vietnam, Cambodia etc.

In doing so we have quite brilliantly shut factories close to consumers that had to perform within regulated pollution controls, and instead, we buy cheaper goods from unregulated high pollution factories and then we ship those products half way round the world.

 
Who thought that this was a good idea? We gained in the short term with cheaper products, but all we did was to kick the can down the road in terms of delaying the moment when we had to run our economy in a balanced, sustainable way.

We could, if we wanted to, produce goods and sell them domestically, but instead, we have exported tens of thousands of jobs to the far east. People will claim that we still retain the IP, the intellectual property to those goods which theoritically is where the value lies, but what about all the jobs?

The outcome of this economic misstep of epic proportions is that wealth has been consolidated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The owners of the IP. Everyone else suffers from this strategy, no one gains.

We live in a world of disposable clothing, disposable electronics, disposable everything. Nothing is worth repairing, just order another one.

If you want to know why the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer and more numerous, globalisation is one of the main reasons.

We, the West, in an attempt to sustain our low cost lifestyles have unwittingly created a monster, the richest monster on earth and it is coming to destroy its creator.

Carbon Offsetting

The big four international oil companies have developed net zero policies. These are focussed mainly around offsetting carbon they produce via the medium of planting trees.

All well and good until you do the maths and discover that the land mass required for just these four companies to offset their co2 emissions is larger than the USA.

No one has pointed out that the land can only be used once and much of it is already owned and used already.

These companies are publishing plans to offset their co2 with out any global plan for land assignment. For example, a company would need to own the land on which it is going to plant billions of trees. The money involved is beyond comprehension.

Their maths also assumes that not a single leaf will fall from a single tree. Not a single tree will die and rot. (thus producing more co2).

I want to know who is going to count these trees, who will validate a companies claims that they have achieved ‘their net zero’ ?….. sounds a little like ‘their truth’….. otherwise known as a …….

What sort of trees will they be? Are we talking about billions of oak trees that will still be around in 300 years or row upon row of conifers that fall over and die at the drop of a hat? Trees need thinning out, managing. It looks like a giant smokescreen of virtual signalling rather than an actual solution to what they think is a problem.

The UK

Our government is very proud of the fact that since the early 1990’s we as a country have reduced our Co2 emissions by over 40%. As a headline that sounds terrific. Haven’t we done well?

Well, not so much in reality. All we have done is self harm to the longterm health of the UK economy. We have exported much of our manufacturing, closing factories and in the process ‘reducing’ our carbon footprint.

This is obviously nonsense to anyone with a modicum of intelligence. We still consume the product, it is just being made on the otherside of the world. Instead of being produced in the UK in a factory that would have regulated emissions and pollution in place. Instead of being shipped by truck or train a few hundred miles to the end consumer, every product has to travel many thousands of miles, after being produced in Chinese factories, powered in the main by coal fired powerstations. (which incidentally are for more polluting that our coal fired powerstations).

The carbon footprint of everything we buy from China should be counted as part of our footprint. It doesn’t suddenly become carbon free if we import it does it?

Our government are deluding us that we are some carbon cutting, virtuous nation when in reality, in the quest for lower wage costs we have offshored our economy and created a monster in the process.

It’s not just the UK of course, most western nations have walked the same shortterm path of lower priced goods today.

We are only just beginning to see the effect that these decisions will ultimately have. We as the West have put all our eggs in one basket. A basket we don’t control. A basket we can’t control.

Cardon Dioxide

CO2 is the trace element of life. Plants grow larger, the more CO2 there is. Our food growers pump CO2 into greenhouses to increase yield. Yes, we pump CO2, the gas we are told we need to reduce in our atmosphere into the air so we can produce more food.

We use CO2 to carbonate fizzy drinks. If CO2 was such an enemy of the people, why have we not banned fizzy drinks?

Every ‘foamed’ plastic is foamed with CO2. That means the panels, seats and dashboards in cars, (including components in Tesla’s & every other electric car – plastics that are made from petrochemicals).

Historically, across millions of years, CO2 in the atmosphere has been over 10 times higher than today. Long before industrialisation and any man made influences were present. These high levels also dropped of their own accord, without any attempt by man to reduce it.

It seems to me that our climate scientists are taking data from a very short period in the planets history. Yes, in the last 250 years, since industrialisation began, we have seen an increase on CO2 of 30%, from 30ppm to 40ppm. Yes, the graph is going up, but from a very low base point in historic terms.

We have had a changing climate for millions of years. When the Romans inhabited the UK from 30AD to 420AD, they walked around in togas, grew wine as far north as York. It was a lot warmer then, but without any human intervention the temperature cooled. We then had a medieval warm period before it cooled again.

We have seen warm periods that were not caused by human activity, the planet subsequently cooled itself. The climate is affected by solar flares more than anything else.

It is the height of human arrogance to believe that we as a species can change our climate. We may as well decide that we want the planet to spin in the opposite direction instead. We can’t do that either.

I agree that it will become harder to live in certain places as the climate changes, but that will be the case whether we spend £ Trillions on the pointless exercise of chasing net zero or not.

I know that many of the great and good own beach front property and want it to remain beach front just as it is. We are currently 3.5 degrees below the long term mean temperature over the last 600 million years. There are many scientists suggesting that in the short to mid term we need to be more concerned about an ice age than a heat wave.

We would in my humble opinion be wiser to invest the billions we are about to waste pointlessly reducing carbon to a theoretical net zero on adapting our living arrangements. If we stopped building on flood plains, dredged our ditches, streams and rivers, built new reservoirs, created drain channels to handle large volumes of water etc. then we would be better placed to live with at least one of the results of climate change.

We could build better tidal defences, we could redesign buildings, we could do so much to adapt to change rather than acting like King Canute and attempting to turn back the tide.

It would cost us far less and also actually have a positive impact on our lives. I do not have faith that our government or our collective world governments have our best interests at heart. I am not convinced that they know what they are doing and I am not confident that their CO2 proposals have any merit nor that they will make even the smallest difference to our climate.