In diplomacy, words matter. When the world’s richest nations got together in 2022 for their biennial energy meeting, their communique mentioned “net zero” 13 times; in 2024, the references went up to 15. After last week’s gathering? Just one occurrence — and that was to underline the lack of universal support. The word-count collapse is illustrative of the direction of global energy policy: Net zero is, effectively, dead.
The movement was designed to cut carbon emissions to a residual amount by 2050, so total emissions would be equal to…
