Net Zero - Impossible Dream?

The Sustainable Futures Report

One year on I'm talking again to James Dyke of Exeter University. This time our discussions ranged from Chelsea tractors to carbon sinks in the Arctic and the Amazon, the mystery of the missing methane (missing from the stats, that is, there’s too much of it in the atmosphere), why injecting sulphuric acid into the stratosphere might be a good idea and why it might not be. We reflected that peat takes centuries to form and only days to destroy, and asked why fossil fuel companies like selling fossil fuels. (Spoiler alert: it makes them rich.) I asked, "When the science is disregarded, denied, disputed, even distorted, why don’t scientists speak up?" And are the politicians right in saying that we’re on track to meet the Paris Agreement and meet Net Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050? "Yes!", they say, (but they are probably crossing their fingers behind their backs.)

What do we do now? This is what James Dyke told me.