This is part of my Betty from Blacktown series. Betty isn’t a real person. She’s most of us. She’s spent her life getting good at one thing, and outside that one thing she’s a beginner like everyone else. I was a pharmacist, then I ran an organisation that trained young people to be confident communicators and trusted voices, and when I needed expertise I brought in specialists. So I’m Betty too, on every subject that isn’t mine.
The only reason I’ve got enough confidence to write this post is that I’ve had the room in my life lately to think about it, turn it over, lose a bit of sleep on it. Betty hasn’t, because she’s flat out with everything else. That’s the only difference between us. I’m on the same learning curve she is, I just got a head start. And once you’ve worked something out, the decent thing is to share it. So here’s my go.
Think of a bath
Picture a bath with the tap running and the plug half out.
The tap is what we put into the air. The water draining away is what the planet pulls back out, the oceans and the forests soaking it up. Right now the tap is on full and the plug is barely letting anything through, so the level keeps rising and the bath is heading for the floor.
Net zero is the point where the level stops climbing. What’s going in matches what’s draining out.
Notice what that does and doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean we stop everything. It doesn’t mean we scrub the bath clean and undo the past. It means we stop making it worse. The level stops climbing. That’s a more honest and more reachable thing than people think when they hear the word “zero.”
It’s something we try for
I think of net zero the way I think of saving for a holiday. It’s an aspiration. Something you work towards knowing the date might move, the amount might change, life might get in the way. You don’t abandon the holiday because you might not get there by July.
The trying counts even when we don’t hit the number.
I know this one from the inside. I farmed dairy for years, and I worked with the beef industry too. So when the red meat industry announced in 2017 they’d be carbon neutral by 2030, I shook my head.
Not because the goal was wrong. Because the number wasn’t real. A target only counts for something if it’s within your power to pull off, and that one leaned on thousands of farmers choosing to come along, plus a stack of things nobody controlled. The one real lever they had was whether they could explain to their farmers why it was worth doing, and they reached for the headline instead. By 2025 they admitted they couldn’t make the date and pulled it back.
Dairy did the opposite. We set ourselves something we could actually reach and got on with it. On our own farm we lifted milk production and brought our methane down at the same time, both moving the right way for years. I used to say it in percentages on the radio and watch it slide straight off people. Nobody ever quoted the numbers back to me. But the day I said our family farm puts breakfast on the table for 50,000 Australians every day, people repeated that one back to me for years.
That’s the difference between a number and a picture. And it’s the difference between a target that’s a fantasy and a target that’s real. The fantasy one got abandoned. The realistic goal kept going.
So why isn’t it just happening?
The lazy answer is that people don’t care enough. I don’t buy it.
I bought some ham the other day. It had a fancy new strip on it, tear here, reseal there. I couldn’t open the thing. Ended up using the scissors like always. And I’d have paid extra for that packaging, the clever packaging that doesn’t work, when all I actually wanted was packaging I could recycle. That option wasn’t even on the shelf.
I didn’t fail there. The packaging failed. The easy thing, the recyclable one, was never offered, and then if I give up and bin it the story becomes that I’m the one who didn’t care.
People care plenty. What’s missing is the easy. The right thing is too often the hard thing, the thing with scissors and a surcharge, while the wrong thing is sitting there ready to go. Change that, put the easy option on the shelf, and watch how fast people “start caring.”
What about China? What about everyone else?
This is the one that comes up every time. Why should we bother when China won’t, when the bloke next door won’t, when half the world is heading the other way.
It’s a fair feeling. Nobody wants to be the mug who does the right thing while everyone else free-rides. But notice it’s a feeling about fairness, not about carbon. And the answer isn’t to argue about China. It’s this: you’re not a mug, and you’re not the problem. We built a whole world that rewards looking after number one and treats chipping in for everyone as the sucker’s move. Of course “us” feels like being taken for a ride. That feeling is honest. It’s just aimed at the wrong target.
The same goes for people in poorer countries starting to eat more meat, wanting the things we’ve had for generations. We’re in no position to tell them not to. But we are in a position to share what we’ve worked out, how to produce each kilo with less cost to the planet. Not “go without.” Here’s how. That’s a gift you can offer without being a hypocrite.
A word about how this gets explained
A huge shoutout to Les Robinson, who’s spent a career on how people actually change. His website is worth a coffee and a good long read. The kind of wisdom you find yourself using every day. Les speaks to Betty from Blacktown. He sees her as an equal, a fellow human being trying to do the right thing with the knowledge she has.
Outside your own narrow patch, you’re a non-specialist in nearly everything, same as me. Speaking language everyone can understand is the key. It’s recognising where the room actually is, and treating people as equals. The opposite, hiding good knowledge behind language you know the other person can’t follow, isn’t clever. It’s a wall.
So that’s net zero. A bath that needs to stop rising. A holiday worth saving for even if the date moves. A thing we try for, because the trying changes where we end up, and the alternative is standing back while the bath water goes over the floor.
I’ll be proud of us for trying. Give it a go.
With thanks to four people who’ve built their careers on being understood by Betty from Blacktown: Les Robinson, Dr Jenni Metcalfe, Gaye Steel and Greg Mills.
☕ Enjoyed Betty’s take? She’s not done yet. Read all of Betty from Blacktown’s catch-ups here