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Why one of the world’s most uncompromising climate scientists says our leaders have chosen to fail, and what we can actually do about it

Net zero is a scam. Kevin Anderson goes straight for the truth about climate change.
There are plenty of climate scientists who soften the message. They talk about “pathways,” “transitions,” and “cautious optimism.” Kevin Anderson is not one of them. 

Professor of Energy and Climate Change, working across the universities of Manchester, Uppsala in Sweden, and Bergen in Norway, he is one of the world’s leading climate scientists.

We refer to him and mention him from time to time. But here’s why we trust him more than almost anyone else: he is brutally direct and honest.

On the Rob Cooper podcast, shared also on Climate Uncensored (source of this post), Anderson laid out the situation in plain language. Here’s what he said.

The 3 numbers you need to understand climate change (straight from Anderson)

1. Temperatures are not small changes.
We signed up to stop warming at 1.5°C or 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Those numbers sound tiny. We need to understand they are massive changes to our climate, they happen on a global scale.

2. Carbon budgets are just fossil fuel budgets.
If we are not to exceed those temperatures, we know how much carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere. Those come from fossil fuels. We know exactly how many billion tons of CO₂ we can still emit. That tells us exactly how many fossil fuels we can burn – and therefore, how much time we have left.

3. The time frame is already broken.
For 1.5°C: zero emissions by the early 2030s. That’s five years from now.
For 2°C: zero emissions by 2045–2050. We have more leeway.
This will happen only if we bring emissions down. But we’re not following the pathway to 1.5°C. We never were. Emissions are still rising. 

We’re not going to achieve the 1.5°C target.

“Our leaders have chosen to fail on climate change; this is nothing new. Every single metric on climate change is pointing in the wrong direction.”

What “progress” actually looks like (spoiler: this isn’t it)

Every year, we add more renewables. Every year, we also add more fossil fuels.
The climate does not care about renewables. It cares about the fossil fuel phase-out.

Anderson argues that, to stay within 1.5°C, we need 7–8% emissions cuts every single year, starting yesterday. Even then, he notes, avoiding major tipping points would require an element of luck.

We will move in the right direction when more renewables mean, at the same time, less fossil fuels.  2°C is not safe. We are not in a good place. 

Lots of academics point to China as if it is progress. But it is not. Carbon dioxide builds up every year. So every year we fail to reduce emissions, the following year gets harder. The reductions we see in China are far from sufficient to deliver. Next year, the problem will be more challenging than this year.

“If the problem gets harder every single year, I don’t call that progress. Progress is only when you deliver what you need to. Let’s not put that as it is in line with our progress. It is not at all. Until we eliminate fossil fuels and the emissions from them, until we reduce the emissions from agriculture, temperatures will just keep going up. Reducing emissions doesn’t mean temperatures stay stable or go down; it means temperatures rise less quickly.”

Temperatures vs impacts

“We shouldn’t only talk about temperatures, we should talk about impacts because impacts are what impact people.”

1.5°, 2°, what are those? If the impacts come in five years, we’ll not have time to defend ourselves. If it happens in ten, we’ll have more time. But some of the impacts occur faster than we thought. That’s a real issue.
Infrastructures were created for a specific climate; changing them is highly costly and time-consuming. But we have to do it.

People think we’re in a new normal. But we’re not, because one day will be new and the next one new again. Temperatures will only start to normalise when we stop emitting fossil fuels. Until that point, the climate will just keep changing.

The lie at the heart: net zero is a scam

The scientists are doing a fantastic job. The oil and gas industries know what is happening. Those at the top of these industries deliberately undermined the climate issue.

There is no climate science as such, he points out. It’s only physics and chemistry that explain the world around us. 

Mitigation is about what we do to reduce emissions. There, says Anderson, we have increasingly been overoptimistic, which has started to lie. We have been telling untruths for at least two decades on climate change. And that’s because the analysis that we do doesn’t fit with a particular political framing of the world.

And every year we fail to deliver on climate change, the level of the lies increases. Some say we can’t take away hope or instil fear.

But our job is to say it how it is. There is a global delusion around this. And it goes much deeper than that. If you want to get funding, economic growth, and net-zero 2050, it has to fit a political agenda.

Organisations are discounting the future to models that are greenwashed to keep business as usual.

Net zero is a scam: how to get to the truth

Policymakers put pressure on the chain, on journalists and so on, so the whole system is delusional. People should use common sense. And just do the maths.

Many academics believe in their own delusion, so it is easier to make other people believe in this. We need to start with a sense of integrity. 

On climate change, we desperately need new ways of thinking; people of my age have totally failed. We need new perspectives.

Climate change is colonial (and no, we’re not all in this together)

For Anderson, climate change is not only a scientific issue. It is also a question of historical responsibility and global justice.
This is one of Anderson’s most uncomfortable – and most important – points.

The UK, US and wealthy nations built their prosperity on slavery, stolen minerals and cheap labour. Now they’re doing the same with the carbon budget.

Today, we are still embedded in the legacy of colonial history. We can’t do anything about the past, but we should at least recognise it. And what we shouldn’t do is perpetuate it. There is a responsibility: our prosperity has been built on the backs of others. 

Now, in the UK, people have more per capita carbon budget we can burn compared to other poor countries. There is a disproportionate share. 

“We took their labour as slaves, we stole their minerals, and now we’re stealing their carbon budget.” 

The UK (all wealthy nations) is perpetuating colonialism. We need to question that. Here’s the connection with climate change.

The second part is that we’re not all in this together. There are people locked in their conditions; there’s nothing they can do.

Poor countries cannot afford to cut further. There are people who need to have higher carbon emissions. The richest 1% of emitters globally produce twice the emissions of the bottom half of humanity combined.

“We need to switch from production to the rich to production for the public infrastructure. We need to move the skills to do good things for society. At the moment, we have private luxury for a minority (a big minority), and public squander for everyone else.”

He is also critical of the “cost-of-living crisis” framing. 

“There’s no cost-of-living crisis, it happens for those who benefit from it.”

For high-emitting, high-income households, responding to climate change would mean paying more. So they pretend we’re all in this together. Because they want to put the cost on the average household. 

“It’s easy to point to the billionaires, as soon as they go to Mars the better, but it’s actually us as well. If this discussion is not heard, it’s because we are in the group of disproportionate use.”

What actually gives Kevin Anderson hope?

Not techno-optimism. Not net-zero pledges.

Hope, for him, lives in action – specifically, in honest, humble dialogue.

People talking at a bar. Schoolkids discussing worthwhile things. Communities deciding what a good life looks like, not just an efficient economy. Humility, if something is wrong, admit it and go on.
He mentions Greta Thunberg explicitly: people of his generation have failed, he says. New perspectives are desperately needed.

“Don’t expect experts to solve this. Change comes bottom-up. Talk with integrity. Leave yourself open to views that feel uncomfortable.”

10 words on a billboard? He said no words.

Impactful images. Local meaning. Tailor the issue to the place and identity.

“Most people are good. Play to shared values, not fear.”

We don’t have to fall into the individualistic model, fighting and competing with each other; we need to value our community. Temperature and metrics are very helpful. To get people on board, we have to go from global to local and see what impacts locally.

What you can actually do (from Anderson’s closing advice)

If net zero is a scam, what can we actually do?

• Don’t look for heroes in high places. Policymakers, most academics, and the media are trapped in the same delusion.
• Use common sense. And do the maths yourself. The numbers don’t lie.
• Have honest conversations. Ask: What is a good world? What is a good life? What is a good community?
• Realise you might be the agent of change. Not a politician. Not a celebrity. You, talking to people around you.

A final thought

Net zero is a scam, Kevin Anderson argues. 
The system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed – for the minority who emit the most.

Change starts when the rest of us stop asking for permission and start talking honestly about what kind of world we actually want.

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Want to hear it directly? Here is the interview with Kevin Anderson on Climate Uncensored, or on the Rob Cooper podcast.