@zerakith To be clear here, I am talking primarily here about corporate or organisational level here.

By net versus gross, I mean the difference between continuing to pollute, but “offsetting” that pollution, versus getting their gross pollution as close to zero as possible.

There’s many orgs and businesses out there claiming to have a plan to reach, or have reached, net zero (or net negative).

And in many cases, what they’re talking about is basically their direct emissions (scope one) and offsite energy (scope two). Not their supply chain (scope three).

And what they really mean is that they’ll continue to pollute, and just buy the cheapest carbon offsets available. In many cases, those cheapest available offsets are of dubious value.

That all sounds great in a press release.

But what’s a lot better is to continually measure and reduce gross emissions across scope one, two, and three, getting them as low as possible.

At a global system-wide level, I would argue we would be in a far better position if we had more businesses, organisations, and governments looking to achieve gross zero than net zero.

@Sina @Blaubarschmann Google is more like a restaurant that has a large chalk board covered with specials. The kind that has a soup of the day, and a fish of the day, and a chef’s special.

There are a few core menu items that are perennials on its printed menu. Search, maps, photos, ads, Gmail, Google Docs, Chrome, Android, Chromebook, YouTube…

Then there’s the messaging app of the day, the TV platform of the day, the flavour-of-the-month device selection…