Bill Gates is known as one of the world’s leading proponents of “net zero.” The tech billionaire said that reaching “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050 will be “the most difficult challenge humanity has ever taken on” and “the most amazing thing humanity has ever done.”
Shifting the world’s greenhouse gas emissions from today’s 52 billion tons to net zero over the next three decades, according to Gates, means “we need to find better ways to do pretty much everything” from the “food we eat” to the “buildings we live in,” because “[v]irtually every human activity produces greenhouse gas emissions.”
But when Gates refers to “net zero,” he does not mean actual zero, as in no emissions.
Adding the word “net” into the equation for redoing “virtually every human activity” substantially changes the meaning of “zero.”