Does UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres really have any hope of persuading rich countries to commit to achieving net zero by 2040? This was a target he declared was vital as he launched the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Sixth Assessment Report yesterday.
He will have his work cut out. The trouble is that while a handful of mostly European countries have enthusiastically set legally-binding targets to eliminate carbon emissions, mostly by 2050, the list is not really growing very fast at all. According to the ‘net zero tracker’ published by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, there are currently 17 countries which have bound themselves by legal net zero commitments. A further 45 countries have written net zero targets into policy documents, 14 have made declarations or pledges and 43 have proposed or discussed such a target.
It is hard to see many other countries opting to make legally-binding net zero targets in the near-future
To take that first group of 17 countries, which includes the United
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