Embedding Net Zero Carbon Emissions in Northern Australia

We are living in a world being remade by the “net zero” paradigm and its interlinked strategies of carbon emissions generation, mediation, and mitigation. As against earlier international commitments to prevent dangerous climatic changes by “stabilizing” emissions creation (COP, 2009: Art. 1), net zero
is defined by an effort to mitigate climate change by balancing residual emission
“debts” with emissions removal and recycling “credits” (COP, 2015: Art. 4.1).
This profound change in global climate policy and practice has recently been embraced as a bipartisan approach in Australia, following fifteen years of charged political contests (Crowley 2021), though political differences remain and some communities are resisting related initiatives and energy infrastructures. As a commitment to reach “net zero by 2050” forms the crux of climate change policies in Australia and many other industrialised nations, this project seeks to document and analyse the social consequences of embedding
the paradigm in place, focusing on a site where its policies, economies, and practices converge: Darwin, Northern Territory (NT).