The Pandemic Won’t Stop Climate Chaos — That Will Require Changing Our Economic System
The COVID-19 lockdown has resulted in a drastic short-term fall in carbon emissions. Without structural change, however, we’re still on a disastrous trajectory. To avoid calamity, we need to transform our economic system.
An aerial view shows an empty Interstate 280 on March 26, 2020 leading into San Francisco, California. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
The first peer-reviewed analysis of COVID-19’s impact on global carbon emissions has now been published. Its findings are startling: in April, global emissions fell by an unprecedented 17 percent, with several individual countries — including France, New Zealand, and the UK — experiencing considerably higher cuts in the range of 30–40 percent.
The study suggests that emissions for 2020 could be up to 7.5 percent lower than in 2019, as lockdown rules around the world continue to shift and the global economy slides into a severe recession, with the IMF projecting real year-on-year global GDP growth of -3 percent.
By comparison, after the 2008 financial crisis, year-on-year growth dropped by just -0.1 percent, and emissions from fossil fuels fell by 1.3 percent as a consequence — nearly six times less than projections for this year. Some scientists have even suggested that the pandemic could shift peak global carbon emissions forward, so that we may never again see annual emissions as high as they were in 2019.
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