A Green New Deal is the solution. So say most of us on the left. Just add cheap and clean green energy. The logic of capitalist market pricing will result in subtraction of expensive and dirty fossil fuel energy.

Sounds great, but this is green washing for the Net Zero Paris Accord approach. The obstacles to decarbonization are not technological. They are the fact that ownership and control of oil is a key basis for the relative economic and political-military power of states and national economies. No one will agree to eliminate their relative power and advantage unless everyone does so together.

The good news is that a strictly enforced global treaty where everyone draws down together is very difficult, but also very possible. It addresses the root causes. It will work.

All we need to do to fix global warming and end carbon dioxide pollution is to implement the Net Zero policies set out in the Paris Accord. That is what we are told. But in fact Net Zero schemes, based on allowing major polluters to buy pollution credits, is a License to Pollute system. The proof? Fossil fuel extraction and carbon emissions are on the rise everywhere.

But there is still hope. There is an alternative approach that can work. I call it Winding Down to Zero, Together.

Mark Carney agreed a deal with Big Oil in the Alberta tar sands. Canadian taxpayers would pay billions more for a carbon capture scheme called Pathways Alliance. In exchange for another pipeline to the BC coast that the Canadian public would also pay for, to the tune of 35 billion and counting.

Do carbon capture schemes actually work? Business reporter Tim Kiladze studied the biggest such scheme in the world in Norway. Can you guess what he found?