Global emissions have seen a significant but temporary drop as lockdowns confined people to their homes and travel came to a standstill. But this temporary dip will only prevent around 0.01C of warming, says a new study in Nature Climate Change.
The study was published in Nature Climate Change. To figure out the impact of the lockdowns, the researchers looked at mobility data from Google and Apple in 123 countries that covers 99% of fossil fuel emissions. The information gives real-time information on travel and work patterns, which allows researchers to use advanced computations to estimate emissions levels, according to The Guardian.
The study also stated, if humanity would aggressively fund renewables in the aftermath of the pandemic, we could avoid an overall increase of 0.3 degrees by 2050 that’s 0.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That could keep the planet within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming from pre-industrial levels, the goal set out in the Paris Climate Agreement.
With countries reopening, emissions are rebounding toward pre-pandemic conditions. Some countries have introduced green recovery plans, while others, like the United States, are rolling back environmental protections. A University of Oxford working paper that surveyed 231 financial experts suggests that climate-friendly recovery packages make more economic sense, while others argue that prioritizing environmental reforms will leave struggling companies behind.
The problem is that carbon dioxide is a very long-lived gas in the atmosphere, persisting for hundreds of years. (Compare that to methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas, but disappears after about a decade.) These few months of lockdown have been but a blip in the atmospheric timescale of CO2. “It takes a very long time for these changes to occur in carbon dioxide. But the point is what we can do to recover from this. If we invest in green energy, we could really improve our chances of reaching the 11.5-degree target” says Piers Forster, director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds.
