Earth to the final frontier - Net Zero isn't enough.

So, a few things I should say before I get into this, and this isn’t going to be a long blog!

1. We clearly need to be doing all we can to stop our planet getting worse
2. I am absolutely a supporter of us doing better and will and do support net zero initiatives
3. I have not founded this blog on hard facts or research, it’s based on my sense of the world, its people and the lack of equality we live in
4. I am a huge science fiction nerd – I’ve often referred to myself as the King of the Nerds, because I love Star Wars, Star Trek and Football all equally!

I don’t necessarily typically do this, by this I mean spot a bandwagon and jump on it.  I see a lot of people blog on topics because they are popular and they want to grow their reach/followship/etc.  That isn’t why I am writing this, climate change is hugely important and all the recent conversations and focus on it has sparked something in me that has made me compelled to say something. I’m totally welcome to people telling me I’m completely wrong and pointing me at things I should read in more detail, in fact please do!  I’m going to start with the ‘something’ and then explain it.

Net Zero isn’t good enough. We have broken our planet’s climate so much it cannot recover unless we reverse the damage we have done. 

At best, Net Zero stops things getting worse, but in reality unless every single country gets onboard with it, and there are some pretty major ones absent, I’m not convinced even that is achievable. Also, by 2030, how much more damage are we going to do? I am not saying this with hard figures; it’s a sense, a feeling based on how things have gotten worse in my own lifetime. Our population is continuing to grow, our consumption is going up, the things we have available to consume are going up.

I think there are some fundamental issues with our desire to be net zero:

1. People want stuff; making stuff, using stuff, throwing stuff away – all has a carbon footprint – the more we have, the more we want (broadly) – people find it hard to give up the things they want, particularly when they have worked hard to get to a point they have the means to have those things – culturally do we think we can make this change?  It’s been what – 70 years in the making? Can we really change that culture in just a decade?
2. A huge part of the world’s population isn’t on a level playing field – they can’t have the things many of us take for granted, they have limited options to use ‘greener’ or 'sustainable' mechanisms to simply live their day to lives; how do we help them to be more carbon efficient, how do we now deny them the things we have taken for granted for decades when it is within reach? This seems like it’s not even being talked about?
3. Consistency – there doesn’t appear to be a consistent way of measuring our carbon footprint; in various things I have read, such as the advice from Spurs on how to try achieve the first ‘carbon neutral’ football game, I just look at and think; but what about the impact from end to end manufacturing, delivering, in my existence to date and ability to even go to the game; how on earth is that measured consistently for all 60000 fans in the ground?  Heck how are some of those things measured at all? Who is then checking the maths?

I think its amazing many (I nearly put we – but that has an implied everyone about it) are now focusing on climate and climate change, that Net Zero initiatives/promises have galvanised many people to support and get involved in sustainability initiatives, targets set for 2025, 2030, 2050….it’s all positive that realisation is coming that we have ‘done bad by this world’ and we need to take steps to address that.  But, in an equation where you are staring at a point where you are worse than you want be (our climate is messed up) , getting no worse (net zero) isn’t good enough to get back to where we need to be (Happy naturally regulating climate?).  The fact that as we attempt to become Net Zero, we are actually continuing to make it worse, that even if you assumed everyone on the planet was net zero by 2050, the climate would still be net (oops) worse off in 2050 than it is today?

So – what is the answer?

Net negative of course!  We have to put back what we taken away, we need to be positively affecting the climate, not negatively, and not ‘holding steady. I am aware there are several organisations who have made net negative promises – I applaud them, though I do feel my challenges in A, B and C still make this a difficult, nay impossible ask for 7billion people on one relatively tiny planet.  So, how can we achieve net negative?

We can leave.  

Not all of us, things were probably okay up until the mid 1800’s*, so maybe only like 80-90% of us.  Leaving 10-20% of the population on the planet to let it (and help it) recover. Maybe when it recovers we can be net zero then and bring some folks back.

I mean leaving isn’t easy, and it’s probably not going to be the most carbon efficient activity you can imagine (I am sure someone could tell me the carbon footprint of Blue Origin or SpaceX if I asked).  But longer term, and for the greater good arguably of the long term future of humanity for other reasons (ultimate death of our sun), getting off this rock and finding other places for us to grow, and un-learn what we have learned to ensure we do not repeat our mistakes with other habitable planets, is, I believe this is the only way Earth can be fixed.  There are simply too many of us here, too many people who are and will remain individuals, or as groups take opposing views, heck, Donald Trump’s stance on client change could return in 3 years! We are not Roddenberry’s vision of a united planet, with one united voice, but rich, varied, conflicted and clamouring to be heard and with no small degree of right to be.  

As I said – we must act, to not act is negligent, but we can do more than net zero, we have to do more than net zero. Let’s dream big, let’s plan big. Let’s go where no one has gone before and let’s not break it when we do, or in billions of years to come, some other race in some other galaxy will be talking about that odd little once blue and green planet with those earthlings in a galaxy far far away that broke their world, couldn’t fix it and never managed to leave their own solar system…thank Q.

*I bounced some of my thinking off a colleague who suggested i edited the date of this point and gave me some cool facts, they have promised they are going to be an early responder to my blog, so i decided to not edit this and let them post them for others to read from the source. Thank you Peter!