“Yes we can.” Barack Obama’s political slogan is the perfect mantra for the net-zero targets that now apply to . As our feature imagining a day in a net-zero life demonstrates, most of the technologies that are required to achieve those objectives already exist, or are in early development.
This isn’t an expression of unthinking, technophile optimism in the face of the dire findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s recent report. We aren’t dismissing the technical, regulatory, economic and social challenges that will be involved in decarbonising buildings, transforming transport, upending diets and reshaping our landscapes.
Advertisement
Neither are we saying that it will be easy to remove the large amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that the IPCC thinks we must do if we wish to avoid the climate impacts of a world that breaches 1.5°C of warming.
But what is clear is that the tools exist for countries to reach net zero by 2050. We have the technologies and, increasingly, the right costs and scale. Wind and solar power can clean up electricity. Electrify almost everything, including heating and cars. Then pick truly green fuels – green hydrogen and more – for tricky stuff like heavy industry, trucks and ships.
“The costs of shifting to net zero must be weighed against the price of inaction”
How well governments pitch their policies to speed up the progress of these technologies will be key to winning buy-in from citizens that will shoulder the costs of the transition. The UK faces that test in coming weeks, with the publication of its net-zero strategy. The extreme weather of 2021 illustrates how the costs of shifting to net zero must be weighed against the price of inaction.
Politicians will also be aided by the fact that, as our feature spells out, a net-zero world should be a better one: healthier, cleaner, wilder. “Yes, we can” is the message for individual countries on the road to net zero. Can the whole world do it? This is the open question that leaders at the UN COP26 summit must address in two months’ time.
