In a surprise announcement on Monday, India, the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2070. The news, delivered at COP26, the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, means that all of the world’s major emitters now have a net zero target— a date by which they will add no more carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than they take out.
Combined with a flurry of country targets unveiled before or during COP26, India’s pledge means that 87% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and 89% of its economy are now covered by net zero targets, although with differing time frames.
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That’s a seismic shift in global climate politics. Less than a decade ago, the idea of reaching net zero emissions was a concept used mostly by scientific researchers and seen as radical by politicians. In 2015, it got an indirect mention in the final text of the Paris Accord, the international climate treaty agreed at COP21. In 2017, Sweden legally adopted net zero as a target for 2045 and then in 2019 a clutch of other countries followed, including the U.K. and France, which set 2050 goals in law. As of Nov. 3, 139 nations have taken up a net zero emissions target, including some of those who have previously been most resistant to climate action.
“If you had asked me even a year ago, at COP26 will we see India, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Russia, walking out with commitment to get to net zero emissions? I would have said that that’d be very optimistic,” says Thomas Hale, associate professor in global public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, part of the Oxford Net Zero research project, set up to study the world’s progress on cutting emissions. “It’s really evidence of a tipping point dynamic where something seems impossible and becomes possible, [starting with the work of] climate activists and developing countries, who pushed it into the Paris…
Source : time
