In order to avoid the worst impacts of global warming, scientists agree that the world needs to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury. How to get there is a more contentious question.
So far, the dominant strategy has been for companies, governments, and other institutions to set their own emissions reduction targets. The idea is that if everyone aims for net-zero by 2050 and comes reasonably close to achieving it, the world will be spared a climate nightmare.
This strategy has only worked to a limited extent — especially in the private sector. More than half of the world’s 2,000 largest publicly listed companies don’t even have a formal net-zero goal, and only 4 percent of those that do meet a United Nations initiative’s baseline criteria for reliability. Companies often rely on questionable accounting or otherwise exaggerate their progress toward climate targets, despite the emergence of several independent standard-setting bodies and verification schemes.
Researchers at the University of Oxford and the E... Read more
