‘Carbon emission to drop 7% this year’
Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels are set to drop by up to 7 percent in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, but even this dramatic decline — the sharpest since World War 2 — would barely dent long-term global warming, researchers reported Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila).
In early April, coronavirus lockdowns led to a 17-percent reduction worldwide in carbon pollution compared to the same period last year, according to the first peer-reviewed assessment of the pandemic’s impact on CO2 emissions, published in
Four countries or blocs — China, the United States, the European Union and India — accounted for two-thirds of the downturn across the first four months of 2020, equivalent to more than 1 billion tons of CO2.
Total emissions from industry and energy last year came to a record 37 billion tons.
“Population confinement has led to drastic changes in energy use and CO2 emissions,” said lead author Corinne Le Quere, a professor at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. “These extreme decreases are likely to be temporary, however, as they do not reflect structural changes in the economic, transport or energy systems.”
If the global economy recovers to pre-pandemic conditions by midJune — an unlikely scenario — CO2 emissions in 2020 are projected to drop by only 4 percent, Le Quere and her team calculated.
But if lockdown restrictions persist throughout the year, the decline will be around 7 percent.
With nearly 5 million confirmed infections and 320,000 deaths, the coronavirus pandemic has deflected attention from the climate crisis that dominated global concerns in 2019. But the climate threat remains, other experts warn. in Midland County, about 140 miles north of Detroit 2 Michigan dams.