{"id":197303,"date":"2021-06-09T16:42:22","date_gmt":"2021-06-09T16:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=3222c4f8f3fea9d21f0cc3202511937d"},"modified":"2021-06-09T16:42:22","modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T16:42:22","slug":"report-details-fossil-fuel-industrys-deceptive-net-zero-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/06\/09\/report-details-fossil-fuel-industrys-deceptive-net-zero-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Report Details Fossil Fuel Industry\u2019s Deceptive Net Zero Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Fire<\/a>

A new report published Wednesday by a trio of progressive advocacy groups lifts the veil on so-called “net zero” climate pledges, which are often touted by corporations and governments as solutions to the climate emergency, but which the paper’s authors argue are merely a dangerous form of greenwashing that should be eschewed in favor of Real Zero policies based on meaningful, near-term commitments to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.<\/span><\/p>\n

The report \u2014 titled <\/span>“The Big Con: How Big Polluters Are Advancing a “Net Zero” Climate Agenda to Delay, Deceive, and Deny<\/a><\/em>” \u2014 was published by Corporate Accountability, the Global Forest Coalition, and Friends of the Earth International, and is endorsed by over 60 environmental organizations. The paper comes ahead of this November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland and amid proliferating pledges from polluting corporations and governments to achieve what they claim is carbon neutrality \u2014 increasingly via dubious offsets \u2014 by some distant date, often the year 2050.<\/p>\n

However, the report asserts that “instead of offering meaningful real solutions to justly address the crisis they knowingly created and owning up to their responsibility to act beginning with drastically reducing emissions at source, polluting corporations and governments are advancing ‘net zero’ plans that require little or nothing in the way of real solutions or real effective emissions cuts.”<\/p>\n

“Furthermore… they see the potential for a ‘net zero’ global pathway to provide new business opportunities for them, rather than curtailing production and consumption of their polluting products,” it says.<\/p>\n

According to the report:<\/p>\n

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After decades of inaction, corporations are suddenly racing to pledge to achieve “net zero” emissions. These include fossil fuel giants like BP, Shell, and Total; tech giants like Microsoft and Apple; retailers like Amazon and Walmart; financers like HSBC, Bank of America, and BlackRock; airlines like United and Delta; and food, livestock, and meat producing and agriculture corporations like JBS, Nestl\u00e9, and Cargill. Polluting corporations are in a race to be the loudest and proudest to pledge “net zero” emissions by 2050 or some other date in the distant future. Over recent years, more than 1,500 corporations have made “net zero” commitments, an accomplishment applauded by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the U.N. Secretary General.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

“Increasingly, the concept of ‘net zero’ is being misconstrued in political spaces as well as by individual actors to evade action and avoid responsibility,” the report states. “The idea behind big polluters’ use of ‘net zero’ is that an entity can continue to pollute as usual \u2014 or even increase its emissions \u2014 and seek to compensate for those emissions in a number of ways. Emissions are nothing more than a math equation in these plans; they can be added one place and subtracted from another place.”<\/p>\n

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Behind #NetZero<\/a> pledges is the reality that #BigPolluters<\/a> can keep:<\/p>\n

\"?\" Buying carbon #offsets<\/a> instead of cutting emissions
\"?\" Driving land grabs in the Global South
\"?\" Extracting and polluting<\/p>\n

Learn more about why #NetZeroIsNotZero<\/a> in this new report https:\/\/t.co\/bi7GoMmvsx<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/qPT6hG9XLv<\/a><\/p>\n

— Global Forest Coalition (GFC) (@gfc123) June 9, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n