Randy Kritkausky is president of ECOLOGIA, a Vermont-based independent international nonprofit. He is an enrolled Potawatomi tribal member.
Climate action planning globally and in Vermont is being distracted by proponents of “net zero” carbon reduction strategies.
While there is some validity in many net zero carbon calculations on a household, facility, regional and national scale, the uncritical wholesale application of net zero strategies instead of focusing on absolute carbon reductions is deeply concerning.
Net zero is frequently touted in a manner that suggests genuine confusion about carbon cycles and carbon accounting. More troubling is the use of net zero in efforts to achieve climate change “feel good” optics rather than achieving real carbon reduction.
And now, late in the game, there seems to be an orchestrated attempt to convince the public that ambitious efforts should not be made, or expenses undertaken, because, as the argument goes, using net zero calculations, we are closer to meeting long-term carbon reductions than those advocating transformative programs recognize.
Regardless of the sources of and motivations behind net zero advocacy and net zero confusion, we all need to take a deep breath and apply common sense to what is rapidly and unnecessarily becoming carbon accounting confusion.
At the heart of all problems surrounding net zero assertions and accounting is a common error. Advocates of net zeroing out our carbon emissions mistakenly assume that natural processes — such as carbon sequestration by forests or historical and ongoing human activity such as farming — should be subtracted from our calculations of the amount of carbon emissions to be reduced.
According to this mistaken application of carbon cycle accounting, Vermont’s Climate Action plan should reduce its target by estimates of carbon sequestered in our forests. The emotional appeal of such a move is understandable. Rather than facing a formidable objective of making huge changes, we can relax, as we are already well along the path to success if we just credit ourselves with the carbon sequestering work that our forests have been doing since the beginning of time.
The problem is that climate action planning necessitates real reductions in overall carbon emissions using current baseline levels.
Current levels, those frightening annual calculations of ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, already factor in reductions made by the Earth’s complex carbon cycles, including carbon sequestered by forests. We shouldn’t subtract carbon reductions due to already ongoing sequestration from overall reduction targets. Doing so is fooling ourselves about what needs to be done.
A medical parallel might help here. Imagine that your physician tells you that you need to reduce your caloric intake by 1,000 calories per day. This figure was established after you submitted careful measurements of food intake for months.
The directive comes with a dire warning: Your current baseline trajectory is that you have a near-certain risk of heart problems and/or diabetes within five years if you don’t reduce caloric intake.
With this sobering news and an ambitious target. you return home. But, in an effort to calm yourself, you calculate that your daily walk expends 500 calories. You then conclude that you therefore need to reduce caloric input by only half of what the doctor ordered. You reduce by 50% of the doctor’s order, feeling that your problem was solved quite easily.
But there is a potentially fatal error: Ignoring the fact that the doctor’s orders were based on the assumption that a 1,000-calorie-per-day reduction was needed, in addition to whatever you were doing to achieve your current weight.
Sadly, you awaken to the dangers of this self-delusion on an emergency room gurney five years later, 80 pounds heavier and with catastrophic heart damage, because your attempt to jigger your caloric cycle evaded physical reality and honest math.
Your “feel good “ net caloric accounting sleight of hand did not change things enough.
But, don’t respectable university scientists and well-known carbon accounting certifying bodies confirm that we can subtract ongoing historical natural carbon sequestration from our baseline of net carbon emissions?
My answer is, sadly, yes, they often do that. This miscalculation is common, widespread and growing in appeal. But such practices do not conform to the highest standards of greenhouse gas accounting. I know because my organization spent years participating in a global process developing criteria for greenhouse gas accounting, now embodied in ISO 14064. Quebec Province uses this rigorous method of carbon accounting in allocation of funds to reduce greenhouse gases.
Still skeptical that reputable greenhouse gas accounting and certifying bodies would indulge in such egregious and purposeful misrepresentations? As the adage goes, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” There is a huge competitive business advantage in allowing clients to make face-saving and cost-saving claims of bogus greenhouse gas reductions.
Still skeptical? Think back to the global economic meltdown of financial institutions in 2008 and 2009. The lessons of that meltdown should be studied as we face an even more enduring and disruptive climate meltdown. What happened in 2008-09? The most prestigious accounting firms in the world cooked the books for their clients, using something that, at the time, passed as “standard accounting procedures” if you held your nose and didn’t want to look too closely.
What happened? Billions of dollars in uncollectible debts, mortgages and loan payments were considered “assets” instead of liabilities on balance sheets that would have gone negative if real math and honesty had been applied. The bad debts accumulating before 2008-09 were known to be unpayable. But financial institutions, investors, borrowers, government regulators and the general public all looked the other way. Until the whole house of cards came tumbling down.
We need such an “aha!” moment now on greenhouse gas accounting and net zero sleight of hand. Otherwise, near-future generations will pay the price of a different kind of meltdown.
I write this with particular concern about bogus greenhouse gas accounting. I am a member of the BIPOC community. Our community has been and will by all predictions be disproportionately impacted by climate change. If we proceed on the assumption that we are already halfway to required greenhouse gas reduction targets (due to forest carbon sequestration) and we reduce funding for programs to shift to electricity and away from fossil fuels by one half, the result will be a crushing burden for the BIPOC community and for those with lower incomes who will be expected to electrify their households using their own resources, or, worse continue paying increasing energy bills due to carbon taxes.
We need honest greenhouse gas accounting, conducted by truly independent certifying bodies, utilizing the highest greenhouse gas accounting standards, and with meaningful BIPOC and lower-income community involvement.
