1. The Netherlands emission neutral in 2050 is comfortably far away for politicians, but unfortunately not good enough. Last summer we could see what the world looks like with 1.2 degrees of heating. Above 1.5 degrees, the Earth becomes even more uninhabitable and unpredictable. In the Paris climate agreement governments commited to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. Climate scientists have calculated a carbon budget. That is the amount of CO2 we can still emit globally to have a 50 percent chance of staying below 1.5 degrees (and therefore also a 50 percent chance of going above 1.5 degrees). So this is certainly not an attractive scenario, but it is currently the generally accepted climate goal. If we continue as we are now, this carbon budget will be depleted in 2028. The reason we demand that the Netherlands be emission neutral even sooner has to do with the following reason: climate justice.

2. Climate justice. By being climate neutral as early as 2025, the Netherlands takes responsibility for past emissions and creates extra time for poorer countries that contributed the least to the crisis and now need emissions growth to get out of poverty. Moreover, as a rich country, we have the opportunities to do this.