Net Zero: Despite the Greenwash, It’s Vital for Tackling Climate Change Corporations must take real steps to fight climate change over making vague commitments. May 15, 2021 By Richard Black, Honorary Research Fellow, Grantham Institute, Imperial College London; Steve Smith, Executive Director, Oxford Net Zero, University of Oxford; Thomas Hale, Associate Professor in Public Policy, University of Oxford It might seem odd to find supporters of climate action debating the merits of a concept that science shows to be essential for halting climate change, and which is accordingly embedded at the heart of the defining global agreement. Yet that is where we find ourselves with the concept of “net zero” — the point at which any remaining emissions of greenhouse gases are balanced with absorption, halting further warming of the climate. The necessity of reaching net zero emissions globally is abundantly proven in science, and governments pledged in the 2015 Paris Agreement to achieve “a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks” in mid-century, in pursuit of holding global warming to 1.5℃.