In diplomacy, words matter. When the world’s richest nations got together in 2022 for their biennial energy meeting, their communique mentioned “net zero” 13 times; in 2024, the references went up to 15. After last week’s gathering? Just one occurrence — and that was to underline the lack of universal support. The word-count collapse is illustrative of the direction of global energy policy: Net zero is, effectively, dead.

The movement was designed to cut carbon emissions to a residual amount by 2050, so total emissions would be equal to those removed either naturally by forests or artificially by carbon sequestration projects. On a net basis, the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would drop to zero.

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