India has committed to reach the net zero emission targets by 2070.
Think of the atmosphere like a laundry basket. If you keep adding dirty laundry into it without clearing it out, the basket will eventually overflow. Greenhouse gases released into the air work the same way. If we keep adding these gases into our atmosphere without removing them, it will eventually become so dirty that the planet will be in trouble.
This is what we’re seeing today. Because there’s too much carbon dioxide and methane and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we have global warming and climate change.
A particular system — like the atmosphere, but also like a factory or a business or an entire industry or even a whole country — can become net zero when it’s adding and removing an equal level of greenhouse gases from the environment.
Net zero is an important goal in the world’s fight against climate change because it’s a practical way to bring global warming under control. Even if we had to be very, very optimistic about climate change, there’s no way we can live on this planet without emitting any greenhouse gases. They’re a part of our existence. What we can do is reduce their quantity, and achieve net zero.
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Of course, net zero is A goal, not THE goal. We need to do many different kinds of things to really get rid of climate change or make it manageable. Net zero is one of them. Maybe the most important goal is to minimise emissions from human activities as much as possible. Nature has its own ways of removing emissions to some extent. For example, mature biomass like old trees and plants can trap and hold some carbon. So one of our goals is to protect these natural mechanisms as well, which we can do by preserving existing forests and their ecosystems instead of destroying or degrading them.
All these goals are designed to keep the earth’s surface from warming more than 1.5 or 2 degrees celsius from the pre-industrial period. This is what most of the world’s countries had decided in 2015 under the Paris Agreement. For more information on this, watch the previous episode of our show.
We also look at the impact of Typhoon Yagi in SE Asia, and what the British rock band Massive Attack is doing to protect the environment.
Presentation: Priyali Prakash
Video: Zeeshan Akhtar, Aniket Chauhan
Production: Shikha Kumari
Published - September 14, 2024 03:53 pm IST
