“The COVID-19 pandemic is not a solution to climate change.”
2020 has been a strange year. The corona virus temporarily halted life in large parts of the world. The widely implemented lockdowns had a significant impact on CO2 emissions. But not enough. According to the WMO, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are still record-breaking high. “The COVID-19 pandemic is not a solution to climate change,” said WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas.
Less emissions
Scientists already came up with the striking finding last May that the corona crisis significantly reduces our CO2 emissions. The decrease in the use of coal and oil in particular has a considerable effect on CO2 emissions. According to the Global Carbon Project, global CO2 emissions at the peak of lockdowns would be about 17 percent lower than in the same period in 2019. And our emissions are expected to be between 4.2 and 7.5 percent lower this year than in the previous year.
Comparable
Still, we shouldn’t cheer too soon. Because since the duration and severity of the lockdowns remain unclear, the WMO warns that the prediction of the total annual emission reduction in 2020 is very uncertain. And even though emissions will be between 4.2 and 7.5 percent lower this year, this will not cause the atmospheric CO2 concentration to drop. CO2 emissions will continue to rise, albeit at a slightly slower rate, at around 0.08-0.23 ppm per year. This makes CO2 emissions in 2020 comparable to the natural annual fluctuations of previous years. And so the impact of the corona crisis will be indistinguishable from natural variability in the short term.
Record-breaking high
This means that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will remain unabated and record-breaking high even in corona time. “COVID-19 has failed to curb the record-breaking concentrations of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, the rise in temperature and more extreme weather, the melting of ice, sea level rise and ocean acidification,” the WMO said.
CO2 concentration
In the meantime, the amount of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere has been steadily increasing for years. In 2019, the sensors at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii even measured alarmingly high CO2 concentrations. So hit the counter to be precise 415.26 ppm (parts per million); the highest since the beginning of humanity. The increase is also expected to continue in 2020. “We passed the global 400 ppm threshold in 2015,” says Taalas. “And just four years later, we exceeded 410 ppm. Such a rise has never been observed in history. ”
Annual amounts of atmospheric CO2
The carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere reached 407.8 ppm (parts per million) in 2018, while it peaked at 405.5 ppm in 2017. This 2.3ppm increase is above the average growth rate that we have seen from year to year over the past decade. Moreover, the increase is close to the value that we also saw between 2016 and 2017 (in 2017 the CO2 concentration was about 2.2 ppm higher than in 2016). In 2019, the CO2 concentration then exceeded 410 ppm. It is quite alarming that the concentration continues to rise. If we continue in this way, according to the WMO, future generations will be confronted with increasingly serious consequences of climate change, including rising temperatures, extreme weather, sea-level rise and disruption of ecosystems.
Moreover, CO2 has not simply disappeared. “Carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for centuries and in the ocean for even longer,” explains Taalas. “The last time the Earth experienced a similar CO2 concentration was 3-5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3 degrees Celsius warmer and the sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now. But then there were less than 7.7 billion inhabitants on our planet. ”
While the global lockdowns have reduced the emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases to some extent, it is not enough for a real turnaround in our CO2 emissions. “The lockdown-related drop in emissions is just a small deviation from the long-term graph,” Taalas emphasizes. “We need sustained flattening of the curve.” And we are far from there yet. So while the pandemic is not a solution to climate change, Taalas says it does provide us with a platform for more sustainable and ambitious climate action to reduce emissions to zero through a complete transformation of our industrial, energy and transportation systems. “The changes needed are economically affordable and technically possible and would only marginally impact our daily lives,” he emphasizes. “It is good that a growing number of countries and companies have committed themselves to CO2 neutrality. There is no time to waste. ”
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