Netting Net Zero

Economist, Yanis Varoufakis (co-founder of Democracy in Europe), believes that Cop26 has been a 'colossal failure' (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/10/cop26-doomed-net-zero). Varoufakis puts this down to basic human selfishness. He notes that everyone prefers a planet on which nobody emits more carbon to drive up global heating. At the same time, however, everyone appears to want to delay paying for the cost of transition, if they can get away with it. The logic seems to be that, if the rest of the planet does the right thing, the world will be saved, even if you selfishly postponed the actions you should have taken. If the rest of the planet doesn't do the right thing, 'why be the only sucker who does?' Varoufakis thinks this is why net zero has been so popular with polluters. Unlike emissions restrictions and/or carbon taxes, it is basically toothless.