I agree with you, although I would say the burning of the planet is the more immediate concern.

But I suggest you should ditch the net-zero target, it obscures the truth.

Net zero is impossible.

Net negative would be a better term, and is perfectly possible. Here is why:

Earth is like a battery, trickle charged by the sun. The charge is energy put to use on Earth by nature - life.

We are discharging it. We've discharged it throughout history. We discharge it by taking all of our energy from it, converting all things created by nature to heat.

We do this always for profit.

Profit is intrinsically linked to, and fully dependent on energy by extraction.

The temperature of this battery indicates the discharge level.

The higher the temperature, the less charge there is left in the battery, because life on Earth has to have a cooling effect, with the conversion of solar energy to things other than the heat it would become if the energy is not constantly converted to anything else. Notice we have removed a large proportion of life. That life would have had a cooling effect, if we had not removed it. We have converted it to heat.

We have to have energy, from some source or another. This has to be from the battery, at the negative end (Extracted), or from the source trickle charging the battery at the positive end (The sun).

That is our choice, one or the other. We can't have both because this would imply the battery has to stay partially discharged, an unsustainable state.

Obviousliy taking it from the sun is the answer.

By that we can even increase the charge rate of the battery, rapidly paying back down our energy debt to Earth.

So it isn't possible to have net-zero. Worse, it would be fatal to pursue it.

Either we take it from one end or the other, and we have exhausted the negative end, so it is the sun or nothing. If we try to take it from both, then all life on Earth has to die anyway, because this will one way or another stall the flow of energy to life on Earth. That is what will happen if we embark down the road of carbon mitigation.

Hence why I say start issuing the solar stimulus, to get us rapidly tooled up, to 100% solar backed by hydrogen