Covid-19 brings South Africa’s daily carbon emissions down by 20%

Our human world has come to a standstill. Or so it seems.

This week the headline is a report from researchers at the University of East Anglia, in the United Kingdom, saying the world’s daily carbon emissions have dropped by 17%. This is a huge drop. The data covers 69 countries, accounting for 97% of all emissions. (That means more than 100 other countries emit just 3% of all emissions). It looks at the last few months when Covid-19 moved from China and paralysed much of the rest of the world.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change, it says carbon emissions right now are at the same level as they were in 2006. Nearly half of the drop (43%) comes from people travelling on land — in cars, trains and buses — and a similar drop comes from fewer emissions from industry and energy production. A full 10% of the drop comes from flights, which normally account for 3% of global carbon emissions.

In South Africa, the data shows the effect of the lockdown. On

March 27, when the lockdown came into force, emissions dropped by 260000 tonnes a day. In the 48 days from then until the dataset ends (May 13) the country emitted 12-million tonnes less carbon than the same time last year. In a year, South Africa emits nearly 500-million tonnes. When the country moved to level four lockdown, emissions again increased by 100000 tonnes a day.

At lockdown levels for a whole year, we would therefore drop carbon emissions by just under 20%.

The researchers calculate that, because countries are moving out of lockdown, the effect across the whole of 2020 will be a drop of up to 7% in global carbon emissions. That’s less than the United Nation’s climate body — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — says is needed every single year to keep global heating below the dangerous 1.5°C mark.

And this is the other truth of the research. A 17% drop is huge. But the whole world has been hit by Covid-19 and the economic effect of the response to it. We are in what could turn out to be the worst recession in history. Factories aren’t working. Millions are without work. This newspaper is being produced by people at home and a skeleton staff at our Johannesburg offices. Everyone has changed how they live, work and travel.

So clearly the line peddled by the fossil fuel industry — that climate action is about individual change — does not hold up.

Covid-19 has provided researchers with a treasure trove of data to look at global carbon emissions.

The results are showing that it is the industries and corporations of our world that do most of the polluting.

In the press release that came with its launch, one of the research’s authors, Professor Rob Jackson from Stanford University says: “The drop in emissions is substantial but illustrates the challenge of reaching our Paris climate commitments. We need systemic change through green energy and electric cars, not temporary reductions from enforced behaviour.”