Net Zero Goals and what we can learn from diet culture?

It’s time we had a grown-up conversation about net zero....it's monday so you might want a coffee for this one...

For years, the phrase Net Zero has been everywhere. It appears in corporate strategies, government roadmaps, packaging, advertising campaigns, and investor decks. “Net zero by 2040.” “Net zero by 2050.” It has become a catch-all for climate ambition, a shorthand for doing the right thing. But there’s a problem.

We are talking about net zero as if it is a fixed destination. A milestone to reach, tick off, and move beyond. The kind of finish line you might see at the end of a marathon. But it’s not that. It never has been.

And the longer we continue to position it that way, in headlines, in brand promises, in long-range policy statements, the more we risk creating confusion and fatigue. People will start to disengage, not because they don’t care, but because the story does not add up.

Because the truth is, net zero is not a one-time goal to be achieved. It is a long-term discipline to be maintained. Even if we dramatically reduce emissions, the job does not end there. We still need to manage the carbon already in the system. We still need to balance what we emit with what we remove.

Right now, we rely heavily on natural systems to do that - forests, soils, oceans. But those systems have limits, and we are relying on the people who manage those systems to over-deliver without sufficient compensation.

Soil can only hold so much carbon. Trees take decades to mature. Land is finite. The early wins are already being used up, and once that headroom is gone, the challenge only gets harder.

That’s why net zero can’t just be about reducing emissions to zero. It has to be about learning how to live within the carbon cycle, how to manage it as a system over time. How to keep carbon moving in ways that support life, not damage it. That’s not something we cross off a list. It’s something we build into how we work, how we grow, and how we make decisions, year after year.

But the first challenge is the messaging - it needs to change before we lose the audience.

What diet culture can teach us about climate communication

If that sounds a little abstract, here’s a more human way to look at it.

Think about how we talk about weight loss. Diet culture encourages us to fixate on a number. "Lose two stone." "Drop a dress size before summer." Success is defined as hitting a target weight. It becomes a result, a finish line, a moment in time. You get there, and that’s supposed to be it.

But we know how that usually goes. People might reach the number for a while, but often end up slipping back into old habits. The systems around them haven’t changed, the environment hasn’t changed, and the motivation that got them there isn’t built to last. Others never quite get there at all and give up along the way, feeling like they’ve failed. It becomes an all-or-nothing story.

That is exactly what we are doing with net zero.

We have turned it into a weight-loss target for the planet. A neat, round number we are supposed to hit. A line on a graph that signals success. And just like in diet culture, it might feel satisfying to set the goal or to say it out loud. It works well in a headline or a shareholder briefing. But it is the wrong story.

Because just like hitting a weight target does not mean you are healthy or likely to stay that way, hitting a carbon number does not mean the systems underneath are stable or the behaviours are sustainable. Without the right structures in place, it is all too easy to rebound.

We also see the same cycle of emotional highs and lows. The optimistic rush of setting the goal. The moment we realise how far away it really is. The shortcuts, the justifications, the creative accounting. Then the panic, the reputational wobble, and the eventual disengagement when progress does not match the promise. Meanwhile, the people watching from the outside begin to question whether the target ever made sense in the first place.

Diet culture also teaches us to focus on restriction and short-term results rather than long-term habits. It reduces health to a single measurement, even when other, less visible signs of improvement are happening. The same thing happens in sustainability when we put too much emphasis on hitting net zero as a binary achievement. It risks masking the messiness and complexity of real progress. It encourages perfection over consistency.

The better framing is this. Net zero is not the outcome. It is the practice. The equivalent of daily movement, eating well most of the time, getting enough sleep, and keeping an eye on your balance over months and years. It is about building habits that are manageable and flexible, not aiming for a single high point.

You do not reach it and stop. You learn how to manage it, how to adjust when circumstances change, and how to keep showing up. Just like staying healthy is about ongoing care, net zero is about continuous effort. There is no final destination. There is only the choice to keep going.

And that is the kind of message people can actually believe in. Not a big promise with a distant deadline, but a practical, honest, and sustainable shift that invites people to play a role and stick with it. Not the six-week bootcamp version of climate action, but the version that lasts.

When net zero becomes a credibility risk

There’s another issue with the way net zero is being positioned and it’s a big one.

Brands, industries, and even countries are being pulled into this race to net zero, often with very little scrutiny of what sits underneath their pledge. Because when net zero is framed as a binary destination — you’re either there or you’re not — we invite all kinds of shortcuts, cheating, false confidence, and vague commitments.

Offsetting gets overused. Complex emissions categories (like Scope 3) get left out. Interim goals remain fuzzy. Progress becomes hard to verify. The language stays ambitious, but the detail is paper thin.

The result is a slow erosion of trust.

As sustainability expert Mike Berners-Lee puts it in his book There Is No Planet B, the climate crisis is “the defining challenge of our time,” but too many net-zero plans rely on creative accounting or unproven removals rather than hard reductions. And consumers are starting to notice.

A 2023 study by Deloitte found that while 62% of UK consumers believe climate change is a serious threat, less than 30% believe brands are being honest about their environmental claims. In other words, people care, but they’re wary of the spin, because we have made it a race, a badge of honour to wear.

Net zero is on the brink of becoming the next victim of overuse and under-delivery. And when that happens, the backlash will be hard to reverse.

We need better goals and a better narrative

So what should we do instead?

Rather than dropping net zero altogether, we need to reposition it for the general population that won't see the nuance and the detail. Not as a single goal, but as a long-term framework for discipline and progress. That means focusing on tangible, sector-specific, measurable targets that reflect the reality on the ground and showing how those smaller goals roll up into a bigger picture of climate responsibility.

Where can we look for targets that work?

In business, we use SMART targets, they work, they are tailored to the job and they are easily defined as success or failure. They give people clarity, accountability, and a sense of progress. The same should apply to sustainability.

Instead of “net zero by 2040,” a food company might commit to:

• Cutting air freight by 50% over five years

• Increasing soil organic carbon by 0.5% on key farms

• Reducing energy use per unit produced by 20%

• Eliminating fossil fuel use in manufacturing sites by 2028

These aren’t as shiny. But they’re achievable. They’re honest. They show real change. And importantly, they help consumers and stakeholders understand what’s actually happening, rather than holding out hope for a grand reveal in 15 years’ time - when it's another executive in charge no doubt!

A note on fairness: not all sectors are the same

One of the great flaws in the current net zero discourse is that it assumes every sector can play by the same rules. That’s not the case.

Reaching net zero in agriculture is fundamentally different to reaching it in tech. In farming, emissions are biological, not mechanical. You’re dealing with methane, nitrous oxide, and the natural carbon cycle, not just energy efficiency and electrification. Soil, weather, biodiversity, livestock, and land use all play a role. There’s no switch to flip.

Tech firms can buy renewable energy and drive down operational emissions much more easily. That’s great. But when they use the same timeline and language as a mixed farm or a steel manufacturer, we start to obscure the challenge. Worse, we lose trust when the harder-to-abate sectors inevitably fall behind.

A better approach is to acknowledge the differences. To map realistic sector-specific pathways. And to stop pretending the same size fits all.

Final thought: balance over boldness

The world doesn’t need another bold sustainability pledge right now. It needs grounded, credible strategies that are realistic enough to last and honest enough to be believed.

Just like maintaining a healthy lifestyle, climate action is about daily practice, not magic numbers. It’s not about hitting a weight once and moving on. It’s about staying in balance, learning over time, and putting the right systems in place to support long-term discipline.

We can’t afford to treat net zero like a campaign. We have to treat it like a culture and a lifestyle change. It will be hard at first, but it will become a habit and we will get better at it.

It's time to get moving and keep it up, almost as if our lives depend on it...