Only Zero Carbon means no fossil fuel emissions. And no fossil fuel emissions means no use of fossil fuels for energy. This means that we need to convert to energy conservation and renewable energy sources.

All existing national and international energy policies support the growth of the fossil fuel industry. This means we'll have continued business-as-usual, fossil-fuel-dominated economic growth. The projected result is more than a 50% increase in global GHGas emissions by 2030 and 100% by 2050.

This would be catastrophic to the future of life on Earth.

Governments worldwide provide the fossil industry with a staggering $300 billion a year in subsidies (International Energy Agency, 2008). All fossil fuel incentives are murdering future life on Earth, and perhaps even our own lives. These subsidies must be banned immediately.

Industries based on fossil fuels must be phased out and closed down, quickly. It will take a huge amount of investment to convert these fossil-fuel-based industries to renewable-energy-based industries. This investment will create jobs and real wealth.

Zero carbon emissions require that we do three things...

• Stop burning fossil fuels and start conserving energy and using renewables.
• Not burn anything else. Burning still adds atmospheric carbon (along with soot and other pollutants) into the air.
• Rapidly develop and deploy carbon capture from the air.

Money being squandered on fossil fuel and biofuel subsidies must be put into the above sets of actions.

Only an international plan agreed to under the UN can achieve zero CO₂ emissions.

Many observers have noted that only a war-time approach can achieve the emergency scale of response needed to achive zero carbon emissions. This would entail the same suspension of peace-time politics, governance and economics that happens under a war government. Our governance-as-usual democratic politics and our business-as-usual economics cannot respond as is required by this crisis.

For politics and business to change so that we can reach zero emissions, the world's climate change scientists must formally state to governments and the UN that only zero CO₂ emissions can stop global warming and prevent the global climate catastrophe that is coming.

International environmental NGOs must campaign to make zero emissions a reality.

The fossil fuel industry's leaders must know about the urgent need for zero carbon dioxide emissions.

We, as civil society, must create a global campaign involving every county if we are to make zero carbon a reality.

An International Agreement Under the UN

We alreadyhave a perfectly adequate binding agreement—the 1992 UN Convention on Climate Change.

The Annex 1 wealthy nations have spent the past fifteen years ignoring their obligations by substituting and negotiating down their obligations via the Kyoto Protocol, which does not implement any of the terms of the Climate Convention. These same countries are doing the same thing now during negotiations for a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol. Though Kyoto has achieved next to nothing in terms of carbon reductions, the rich nations are negotiating for the same treaty model as Kyoto.

Unlike all other forms of government, the UN requires all nations to agree on a new treaty. The result is that any one nation in effect has a veto. So the United States, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as just a few examples, have been able to block any progress on global mitigation. If nations really intended to stop destroying the Earth by global warming, they would all agree to implement in full the intention and terms of the Climate Convention right away.

For this to happen, nations would have to stop their denial. They would have to agree that the world is far past dangerous atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, with a huge risk of civilization collapsing in most people's lifetime, and of the eventual extinction of most all life on Earth from runaway global heating.

That would have to lead to a UN declaration of a global state of emergency. That would lead to nations making a global peace and disarmament treaty and combining all their forces for the survival of humanity, by launching a global zero carbon development and redevelopment venture as a global negative carbon project.

For zero emissions to become reality, we must begin to price carbon. This means adding in the cost of social (health, displacement) and environmental (pollution, global warming) damages to the cost of fossil fuels. There is only one way to do that—tax carbon.

Capping emissions and trading carbon permits may be useful, but they do not entail a government policy to add the actual cost of social damages, pollution and greenhouse gases to the production and sale of fossil fuels. Governments cannot be relied upon to do so.

There is no possibility of capping and trading being able to achieve zero CO₂ emissions. Legislation and enforcement of zero carbon dioxide emissions is clearly the responsibility of governments.

The invest and banking industry have to be regulated so that they finance and profit by only sustainable development (in other words, no financing of fossil fuel development or fossil-fuel-based development).

If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists do not make a statement on only zero CO₂, there will be no government action to develop effective legislation and enforcement.

With runaway global heating being imminent, there is no time left for economic instruments alone, or combined, to save us. The only chance now is a massive global investment of public money by deficit financing from all wealthy nations.

A peace dividend and an aerospace dividend would provide some funds and, more important, the skills and technolgies needed.

The only global emergency response is a huge global economic stimulus in renewable energy development and developing new ways to conserve energy. The world economic system must be redesigned to stimulate and finance renewable energy output to meet total global energy use, in under a decade. The last fossil fuel energy must be burned to build the renewable energy/high conservation world we need if we are to survive.

The currrent approach is wrong. Our economics is designed to to be dependent on using unlimited amouts of fossil fuels, and climate change mitigation is being worked out to accommodate this economy. This cannot continue if we are to continue as a species. The economy must be redesigned to accommodate the energy revolution.