COVID-19 Lockdown Will Only Lead To 4% Decrease In Global Carbon Emissions

The spread of the COVID-19 outbreak has led to countries being put under lockdown. The pandemic has hit pause on all operations. As an unintentional result, almost no global carbon emissions have been produced.

A new report wants to estimate how much the environment can exactly benefit from this. Despite what you have been reading, it is not that much.

CarbonBrief does that an estimation by using data sets that represent three-quarters of global emissions. And it says that 2020’s total drop in worldwide emissions would be around 4%.

And with that, the COVID-19 outbreak will surpass other events like wars or economic recessions to cause the largest annual drop in carbon emissions that has ever been recorded in history.

On the other hand, it suggests how difficult it is to lower global carbon emissions. To stop global warming from rising 1.5 Celsius degrees higher, there must be a 6% drop in world emissions annually for the next decade.

While the global emissions might decrease right now, it is not long until everything is back to normal, leading to the rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Even when other countries around the world still remain under lockdown, all operations in China are going back to normal, with carbon emissions produced in almost the same quantities as before, only a few months after the pandemic broke out in Wuhan.

The 4% mark might change depending on the situation of the outbreak.

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