WORLDFIRE - Chapter 12, Part I
Zero Emissions & Beyond
Image credit: NOAA
“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics, whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were, and ask why not." President John F. Kennedy (June 28, 1963)
As historic an accomplishment as achieving 100 percent renewable electricity for the United States will be, greening the electricity grid only solves part of the carbon pollution puzzle. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the sources of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, broken down by economic sector in 2022, were: Transportation (28%); Electric Power (25%); Industry (23%); Commercial & Residential (13%); and Agriculture (10% - this proportion rises when you factor in the fossil fuels needed to operate farm machinery, manufacture petrochemical fertilizers, and pesticides, etc.). Again, according to the EPA: “Percentages may not add up to 100% due to independent rounding.” As you can see, even if every nation in the world were to follow our lead in achieving a green energy moon shot, this won’t halt the ruinous rise in pollution. Greening the grid is only part of the solution. This will only slow the rate at which things continue to get worse. For things to actually get better, we must zero out emissions in all sectors. To restore a safe climate for posterity, we must travel to a world of zero emissions and beyond.
You do the math: humanity has already shot past the dangerous level of 420 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and must drop that to 350 ppm or less to preserve a habitable planet. By less, I am referring to the rarely reported target range of 300-325 ppm James Hansen and other respected climate scientists tell us may be needed to restore Arctic sea ice. But don’t get lost in all the numbers and parts per million. My point is we have to stem the rise of pollution. We have to stop doing things that hurt us, like drilling for limited oil and gas, and start doing things that help us, like tapping the unlimited power of the sun and the wind.
Delay comes with a cost. Consider this from a paper authored by Hansen and others in 2013: “It is instructive to see how fast atmospheric CO2 declines if fossil fuel emissions are instantly terminated. Halting emissions in 2015 causes CO2 to decline to 350 ppm at century’s end. A 20 year delay in halting emissions has CO2 returning to 350 ppm at about 2300. With a 40 year delay, CO2 does not return to 350 ppm until after 3000. These results show how difficult it is to get back to 350 ppm if emissions continue to grow for even a few decades.” I’ll be the first to admit that math is not my strong suit, but even I can do the math on the number zero. It doesn’t take a climate scientist to see you can’t make things better until you stop making things worse. Until we get to zero emissions, things will just keep getting worse. Every day we delay getting to zero just buries us deeper in the climate hole.
Because we have already overshot safe levels of polluting emissions, it is suicidal for humanity to keep pumping up even more. Modest cuts in pollution over a span of decades will not slow global meltdown. The only thing that will is transitioning the world’s economies to zero emissions in years. There is a reason why politicians love saying we have until 2050 or 2100 to transition off of fossil fuels–they’re passing the buck until they’re either out of office or dead–but if we wait that long to zero out emissions, they’re going to have a lot of company in those graveyards.
Zero Emissions America
In 2011, my friend Paul Alexander and I began zeroing in on the need for zero emissions. We even considered launching a group called Zero Emissions America with a Green New Deal at its core for achieving zero emissions, but as with many good ideas people develop, we were unable to raise the resources to get the initiative off the ground. Elsewhere, however, the concept was picking up steam, with founder and CEO of Track 0, London-based lawyer Farhana Yamin, leading the charge for zero emissions globally. Credited with being the first person to publicly push for an international zero emissions goal, Yamin does not want credit for the idea, but credit is certainly due. Since first introducing the goal in 2013, one mother’s idea has gone viral. The zero emissions concept was given credibility on the world stage that same year when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking to a zero emissions conference in Oslo, declared: “Zero emissions is an ambitious but achievable goal.” Other early adopters of the goal include the prestigious Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in London, Zero Carbon Britain, and Australia’s Beyond Zero Emissions.
In 2014, an opportunity presented itself to launch the zero emissions vision into orbit: a UN Climate Summit being planned for New York that would shine a global spotlight on the global climate challenge. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had publicly challenged world leaders to bring their pledges to set the world on a low-carbon path. In the hopes of influencing the summit agenda, I asked my friend and colleague, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr., to co-author a piece with me called, “A Zero Emissions Manifesto for the Climate Justice Movement.” It began by declaring, “Zero has become the most important number for humanity.” These excerpts explain why:
Any chance of stabilizing the climate hinges on transitioning to zero greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as humanly possible. Simply slowing the rise of emissions will not work. For the first time, the world’s leading climate authority, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has embraced a goal of near zero greenhouse gas emissions or below. In stark contrast, neither the U.S. President, nor a single member of the U.S. Congress, has yet publicly called for a zero emissions goal for America. As the nation that historically contributed the most to global climate pollution, and is in the strongest position to respond, the U.S. has a moral imperative to lead this global charge... We entreat Mr. Ban… to challenge attendees of the UN Climate Summit to bring their zero emissions plans... Anything less will show our governments are not serious about solving this existential threat. Now is the time for the climate justice movement to rally around a goal of zero emissions, with the U.S. leading the way by enacting zero emissions policies at the local, state and federal levels. For the love of humanity, and our children, we must act now.
Determined to make the international climate spotlight burn even brighter, a large collection of groups under the banner of the People’s Climate March put out a call for a massive pre-UN summit march in New York City. Hoping to get the zero emissions demand to go viral prior to the march and summit, my friend Paul led the charge in sharing our manifesto with more than a thousand movement thought leaders, including every organization endorsing the march for which he could find an email address (most of them). I remember him even pulling an all-nighter to get it done. But the march organizers had already decided not to issue any specific demands of the UN, which opened up the event to pretty much anyone. The more than 1,500 march endorsers ran the gamut, from my consulting firm, Climate Crisis Solutions, to Greenpeace, to the Environmental Defense Fund to The Climate Group (which includes among its corporate partners Duke Energy and Goldman Sachs). As a veteran organizer, I understand the dynamics of building coalitions. Generally, the more specific your demands, the smaller your tent, and they were going for numbers as a show of force. I get that. But this was a unique political opportunity. Two days before the UN Secretary-General was convening a summit calling on the world’s governments to bring their bold visions to New York–the same Secretary-General who just one year earlier had made news by publicly calling the zero emissions goal “achievable”–the People’s Climate March was calling for zero demands, let alone zero emissions.
On the eve of the march, at an event dubbed “The Talk Before the Walk,” U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) delivered a keynote speech in which he encapsulated the challenge of our climate conundrum in a few brilliant sentences: “If all over this country, millions of people sense the potential to transform our energy system, why aren’t we doing it? Why aren’t we doing it? Well, this I know a little bit about, ‘cause I sit in the United States Senate. So let me begin by telling you nothing passes the United States Congress without the approval of the oil companies, corporate America, and Wall Street, and unless we address that issue, we’re not gonna address this issue.” In other words, until we get dirty money out of politics, we’re always going to be swimming upstream.
The corporate takeover of our political system was underway well before the Supreme Court’s contemptible 2010 “Citizens United” ruling that effectively equated corporations with people, empowering them to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections as “free speech.” The Court’s destructive 2010 decision, which can only be overturned by amending the Constitution, legalized the buying of our elections by special and foreign interests. Today’s politicized Court has strayed far from its charge to serve as “guardian and interpreter of the Constitution.” In response to this hijacking of our democracy, the nonpartisan group Move to Amend is building public support for congressional legislation that would begin the process of overruling Citizens United through such a constitutional amendment. Amending the U.S. Constitution, which has happened 27 times, must be proposed by a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate and be ratified by the legislatures of three-quarters of the states. But even successfully overturning Citizens United, as critical as that is, only gets us back to the corrupt system of political bribery we had before that infamous Court decision.
The way out of this mess is not through the vague goal of “campaign finance reform.” The only way to truly end corporate rule is to get private money out of politics, specifically through public funding of federal elections. The shady revolving door between legislating and lobbying must also be slammed shut. You know, the one where special interests make former politicians rich for the service of providing them with special access to their buddies who are still in office. Candidates for public office also need to be granted free and equal access to the public airwaves (which are owned by the American people after all) to make their case to the voters. And the antiquated Electoral College needs to be replaced with direct democracy (one person, one vote), an effort poised to succeed thanks largely to the efforts of a transpartisan group called National Popular Vote, an effort that might have already succeeded with more focus and resources from more democracy advocates and groups.
Getting back to the People’s Climate March, the march that unfolded on the streets of New York was alternatively portrayed by activists as a “tipping point” to a “dull knife” to something in between. In my eyes, getting 300-400,000 people showing up anywhere to express their alarm about anything qualifies as a success. History shows that marches have the ability to shift public opinion. In addition to being the largest climate gathering in U.S. history, the People’s Climate March spurred 2,646 solidarity events in 162 countries. In a notable departure from past major climate rallies, it was also marked by a refreshing lack of green group branding. Led by Indigenous leaders and frontline community leaders, it emphasized climate justice. But it could have been so much more. As climate activist Lucy Emerson-Bell reminded everyone in a post-march critique: “Marches, rallies, boycotts or protests are tactics, not goals. In order to affect change, these tactics should be structured to inform a strategy with measurable goals and a timeline… The March on Washington was designed specifically to advocate passage of the Civil Rights Act. Marchers participating in the Women’s Suffrage Parade called for a constitutional amendment for the right to vote. In 1969, a half a million people descended on Washington to end the Vietnam War. What will the People’s Climate March leverage? What bill will we pass? What cornerstone policy will we enact?” She reminded us that “the one thing the movement is missing is focus.”
Not even in the two-day window between when the march ended and the UN Summit began did I see any group other than The Climate Mobilization call for the UN to embrace zero emissions as a goal. From a strategic point of view, this was a huge missed opportunity. Less generous would be to call it political malpractice, for the UN Secretary-General would no doubt have welcomed a zero emissions demand. I say this because my friend Rev. Yearwood was in the Secretary-General’s office prior to the march, where Mr. Ban’s staff told him they were thrilled by our manifesto and had made sure their boss read it. They shared that when Mr. Ban had brought up the zero emissions goal months prior, he had received very little reaction and was questioning how hard to keep pushing for it until our op-ed helped reinforce his original inclination. If a single op-ed had that kind of impact, imagine what a demand from hundreds of thousands of climate marchers could have done.
Several months later, at the 20th United Nations climate conference in Lima, Peru, language calling for “net zero emissions by 2050” did make it into the text of the draft UN agreement before being stripped out by negotiators at the last minute. While the 2050 timeline was decades off target, the zero emissions flag had at least been momentarily raised. It may have remained standing if a movement-wide call for zero emissions had been issued on the streets of New York. I share this not to bemoan the past but as a sympathetic critique to inform the most effective strategies for the future. In the face of this cascading crisis, we no longer have opportunities, or years, to waste. We need to be super-strategic about what we do going forward.
The following summer, in the build-up to the international climate negotiations in Paris, Rev and I published a follow-up piece called, “America’s Zero Emissions Imperative.” Here are excerpts from that commentary:
Last fall, we wrote an article explaining why zero has become the most important number for humanity. Since that time, zero emissions has been embraced as an idea that's time has come by nearly 120 countries, leading European companies, high-profile CEOs, two Pontifical Academies, climate visionaries like Al Gore, mainstream media outlets and, if you can believe it, even the leaders of the G7. We now address the critical issue of timelines. Currently, the two target dates most commonly cited for achieving zero greenhouse gas emissions are 2050 and 2100. Given the extreme weather weirding we are witnessing at current levels of pollution, we shudder to think what 35 years – let alone 85 years – of continued emissions will bring... we join with our allies at The Climate Mobilization in calling on Congress and the White House to revitalize our economy and put America back to work by declaring a U.S. goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. Five months from today, delegates from more than 190 nations will gather in Paris… to negotiate a global climate accord… Intergenerational justice demands that the centerpiece of the Paris agreement be zero emissions.
When even the conservative World Bank rightly declares, as it did in a 2015 report, that “[s]tabilizing climate change entails reducing net emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) to zero” (while wrongly suggesting we wait until 2100 to do it), you know zero emissions is an idea that’s time has come.
I have twice now mentioned a group called The Climate Mobilization (TCM). The group’s founding mission was to “save civilization and the natural world” by demanding a “WWII-scale mobilization to restore a safe climate.” As fate would have it, in 2014, TCM stumbled upon a 2011 open letter I had written to President Obama and Chinese President Hu calling for an emergency wartime-like climate mobilization. This prompted the group’s co-founders to dial me up to ask how that coalition letter had come to be. What they were most curious about was why more of the co-signing groups were not still publicly pushing for its stated goal of 80% carbon cuts by 2020, a question for which I had no good answer other than that it wasn’t the first time bold goals by big green groups had been embraced and abandoned. Reflecting back, I realize that the biggest reason was lack of organizational follow through. Without a staffed and funded effort to build a lasting campaign around the goal of 80% cuts by 2020, the letter and its demand were soon forgotten. It wasn’t for lack of effort. I tried, and failed, to convene more than one climate emergency summit in the years following the coalition letter’s release, but as the lead author of that letter, the responsibility for that failure ultimately rests with me.
TCM later asked me to join their advisory board. I only agreed for two reasons: 1) the group’s principled commitment to speaking hard climate truths; and 2) their support for what I and others like Lester Brown had long been advocating, namely a climate emergency mobilization at wartime speed and scale. Around this same time, I was growing increasingly anxious that we were about to blow another prime opportunity to help shape the agenda at the looming climate negotiations in Paris. Feeling desperate for U.S. leadership at the talks, I drafted, and TCM helped me promote, “An Open Letter to President Barack Obama: The Moment of Truth for Your Climate Legacy.” Referencing the coalition letter I had written to Presidents Obama and Hu in 2011, this letter called on the president to go bold and champion a U.S. goal of zero emissions at the UN-sponsored talks. You probably didn’t hear about it, because the mainstream media didn’t report on it, but here is the text of that September 2, 2015 letter, signed by more than 1,000 climate leaders from around the world:
Dear Mr. President,
The moment of truth for your climate legacy has arrived.
More than four years ago, you received an open letter from some of the nation’s top planetary protection leaders urging you and the president of China to publicly declare a global climate emergency by committing our respective nations to 80% carbon cuts by 2020.
Because that urgent call was not heeded, we have lost precious time in the race to save civilization and must now set our sights even higher. It is with a deepening sense of dread over the fate of humanity that we call on you today to use the powers of your presidency to champion a U.S. goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
Innovating our way to zero emissions through an all-hands-on-deck societal mobilization at wartime speed is not only our best hope for averting climate catastrophe – it is key to revitalizing our economy and putting America back to work.
In three months, you and leaders from more than 190 nations will gather in Paris for the UN Climate Conference to negotiate a global climate accord. Intergenerational justice demands that the centerpiece of that accord be zero emissions, a goal UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calls “ambitious but achievable.” Three months is ample time for your administration to draft a legally binding zero emissions commitment for Paris.
As you know, Pope Francis wrote in his recent encyclical: “Reducing greenhouse gases requires honesty, courage and responsibility, above all on the part of those countries which are more powerful and pollute the most.” Since the U.S. historically contributed the most to global climate pollution, and is in the strongest position to respond, we have a moral imperative to lead the zero emissions charge in Paris.
The current weak U.S. target of 26-28% carbon cuts by 2025 cannot be described as honest, courageous or responsible in the face of a crisis that threatens the continued existence of humanity. To pretend otherwise is to recklessly gamble with the fate of future generations.
For the sake of our children, and those to follow, it is time to stop promoting “All-of-the-Above” and start protecting all that we love.
One of the media outlets that covered the letter’s release was EnviroNews, which reported: “As President Obama galavants around the Alaskan Arctic with the press this week in a historic climate tour reinforcing his ‘All-of-the-Above’ energy policy, a group of diverse and well-known environmental leaders says that philosophy just won’t cut it – and it collectively released a letter this morning telling the President just that. Mark Ruffalo, Ed Begley, Josh Fox, Winona LaDuke, Tim DeChristopher, Julia Butterfly Hill, and David Suzuki, to name a few, were amongst the letter’s 80-plus well-known signers.” But it was all to no avail.
Shortly after the letter was published, some of my colleagues challenged me on the “net zero” language. This perplexed me. To me, “net zero” was an acknowledgement that eliminating every last molecule of greenhouse gases from human activities is a physical impossibility. Everyone knows that even with a superhuman effort, some carbon pollution will continue to be released into the atmosphere no matter what actions we take. Ergo, achieving zero emissions requires the near elimination of carbon pollution, with the remaining emissions that cannot be physically prevented compensated by an equivalent amount of carbon that is naturally drawn down from the atmosphere. In other words: near zero emissions + carbon drawdown = net zero emissions. I shared with my colleagues that my vision of “net zero” emissions had nothing to do with carbon offset schemes or corporate land grabs that harm Indigenous cultures and do even more violence to Indigenous Peoples. I made it clear that a zero emissions plan that is not just and equitable has zero credibility with me. But it is not just about what I think. In hindsight, I now see that their concerns were well founded. They were right and I was wrong. Governments, corporations, and the United Nations have all hijacked the “net zero” phrase to enable deceptive carbon offsets, unjust land grabs, and fantasy future technologies to delay having to actually stop polluting the atmosphere. As a result, I no longer use the phrase “net zero.” What we need is real zero emissions.
NOTE: The written form of WORLDFIRE is the authoritative version. Any inadvertent errors in transcribing the recordings are mine and mine alone.
Real Zero Admissions, indeed!