John Kerry, the US President’s Special Envoy on Climate, is currently on a three-day visit to India. One of the objectives of Kerry’s visit is to explore whether India can agree to the possibility of pledging itself to a 2050 net-zero goal.
Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2021
Net-zero, which is also referred to as carbon-neutrality, does not mean that a country would bring down its emissions to zero.
Rather, net-zero is a state in which a country’s emissions are compensated by absorption and removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Absorption of the emissions can be increased by creating more carbon sinks such as forests, while removal of gases from the atmosphere requires futuristic technologies such as carbon capture and storage.
This way, it is even possible for a country to have negative emissions, if the absorption and removal exceed the actual emissions. A good example is Bhutan which is often described as carbon-negative because it absorbs more than it emits.
A very active campaign has been going on for the last two years to get every country to sign on to a net-zero goal for 2050.
It is being argued that global carbon neutrality by 2050 is the only way to achieve the Paris Agreement target of keeping the planet’s temperature from rising beyond 2°C compared to pre-industrial times.
Current policies and actions being taken to reduce emissions would not even be able to prevent a 3–4°C rise by the turn of the century.
