In 2013, a group of women sat around the kitchen table at Glen House, a country estate in the Scottish borders.

Farhana Yamin, one of the lead organisers, describes them as “lionesses”: a pride of around 30 lawyers, diplomats, financiers and activists on a mission to halt dangerous climate change.

Not least among them was Christiana Figueres, head of the UN climate body, responsible for getting a just, ambitious and effective international pact at the upcoming 2015 Paris summit. Nobody wanted to see a repeat of Copenhagen 2009, where talks collapsed.

This idyllic retreat at the home of green finance pioneer Tessa Tennant, who died in 2018, was a testing ground for many elements of the Paris Agreement. These included a concept that is fast becoming the guiding principle of climate action: net zero emissions.

“There had been discussions about what should be the long-term goal of the UN regime for a long time, going right back to the early days. We had umpteen takes,” says Yamin, a veteran of the process.

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Farhana Yamin at Chatham House, where she is an associate fellow (Photo: Adopt A Negotiator)

Net zero was the idea that emerged and is now being translated into national laws, urban strategies and business plans among would-be climate leaders.

UN chief Antonio Guterres has adopted carbon neutrality by 2050 as the benchmark for ambition ahead of his climate summit in New York on 23 September. Even as the political coalition behind Paris fragments, with backsliding from the US, Australia, Brazil, activists are calling for zero with fresh urgency and analysts mapping out how to make it happen.

It is not without problems. No major emerging economy is ready to embrace the absolutism of a greenhouse gas phaseout. The “net” in “net zero” masks a range of loopholes. But it brings a clarity to the issue that was previously lacking.

There was an informal consensus around 2C as a threshold for dangerous global warming. Small island states, whom Yamin advised over much of her career, argued a tougher 1.5C limit was essential to their survival – it was their die-in-the-ditch issue in Copenhagen.

While those temperature goals would find a place in the Paris Agreement, neither readily translated into workable emissions targets.

“When I reflected on why Copenhagen failed, I came to the conclusion… we needed a more concrete, practical measure,” says Yamin.

Some experts focused on the concentrations of CO2 in the air, others advocated personal carbon budgets that would “contract and converge” until the world’s rich and poor were on the same level. Taking inspiration from the Montreal Protocol, the treaty to phase out ozone-depleting CFCs, Yamin plumped for the simplicity and universality of zero emissions. “Once people get their heads round this scary idea, they enjoy having this constraint and something to work towards.”

Yamin went on to set up Track0 to mobilise support. While a handful of men get credit in her account, she keeps returning to how this informal network of women drove the campaign in their various spheres of influence, reinforcing one another’s conviction. “There are many mothers of this goal,” she says.

It was at Glen House that the net zero target won some important backers. For Rachel Kyte, the gathering was a pivotal moment. She digs out a photo of her son playing on the lawn to check the timestamp – 3 August 2013....

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