In The End, Short-Term COVID-Driven Drop In Atmospheric CO2 Output Won't Change Anything

The Covid-19 pandemic will deliver an unprecedented annual drop in global greenhouse gas emissions of up to 7% by the end of 2020, but the slowdown’s impact on the atmosphere will be almost imperceptible, according to a major report led by the United Nations.

Analysis of fossil fuel burning found emissions hit their lowest daily rate in April but by June – as economies began to open up again – emissions were returning to the same levels seen the previous year.

Dr Pep Canadell, from Australia’s CSIRO climate science centre and one of the report’s authors, said by the close of 2020 the pandemic’s impact on slowing emissions would be at least twice that of the 2007 global financial crisis, when economic activity dropped. “For this year, what this means for the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere fundamentally, is nothing,” Canadell told Guardian Australia. “That’s because we put 42bn tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere last year so even three per cent less means we are still loading the atmosphere so heavily that this is not even a blip.”

The United in Science report was launched Wednesday in Geneva by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, who said recovery from the pandemic needed to be turned into an opportunity to tackle the climate crisis. Using analysis of global emissions up to June, the report found 2020 would see a drop of between 4% and 7% based on 2019 levels.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/11/impact-of-covid-slowdown-on-co2-in-the-atmosphere-not-even-a-blip-australian-scientist-says