Net-zero emissions goal requires planting forests five times the size of India – New Report

“Net zero” emissions targets are a “dangerous distraction” for the real task of overall emissions reductions, a new report has claimed.

Oxfam claims the focus on “net zero” – balancing emissions produced with those removed from the atmosphere – are side-tracking governments and businesses from taking steps that could have a real impact.

The charity claims in its Tightening the Net report that “that too many governments and corporations are hiding behind unreliable, unproven and unrealistic ’carbon removal’ schemes in order to claim their 2050 climate change plans will be ‘net zero’”.

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The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in May the path to net-zero emissions is narrow, but achievable.

“Staying on it requires the massive deployment of all available clean energy technologies – such as renewables, electric vehicles (EVs) and energy-efficient building retrofits – between now and 2030. For solar power, it is equivalent to installing the world’s current largest solar park roughly every day,” the IEA said.

However, Oxfam said achieving “net zero” by 2050 with land use alone would require at least 1.6bn hectares of new forests, or five times the size of India.

Governments and big business are “failing to cut emissions quickly or deeply enough to avert catastrophic climate breakdown”, Oxfam said. 

Their sudden rush of ‘net zero’ promises are over-relying on vast swathes of land to plant trees in order to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

“To limit warming below 1.5C and prevent irreversible damage from climate change, the world collectively should be on track to cut 2010 carbon emissions level by 45% by 2030, with the sharpest being made by the biggest emitters.”

Source: Irish Examiner