Climate crisis: CO2 hits new record despite Covid-19 lockdowns
Drop in emissions this year is a ‘tiny blip’ in buildup of greenhouse gases, UN agency says.
Climate-heating gases have reached record levels in the atmosphere despite the global lockdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization has said.
There is estimated to have been a cut in emissions of between 4.2% and 7.5% in 2020 due to the shutdown of travel and other activities. But the WMO said this was a “tiny blip” in the continuous buildup of greenhouse gases in the air caused by human activities, and less than the natural variation seen year to year.
"7.7 billion [human] inhabitants"
"Let's just start by acknowledging that whatever the incoming Biden administration does on climate change, it likely won't be enough for environmental activists and it likely shouldn't be. Nonetheless, we are starting to get some encouraging news about Joe Biden's approach to tackling climate change issues.
Most importantly, rather than relegating climate action to a single agency, Biden plans to take a whole-of-government approach to combatting the biggest existential threat of our time. According to The Washington Post, he plans to "embed action" across the federal government in departments ranging from Agriculture to Treasury to State instead of simply tasking the Environmental Protection Agency with creating every climate initiative. Most of it will be done by executive action rather than requiring the passage of legislation."
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What do progressives make of Joe Biden's cabinet picks so far?
The appointment of John Kerry as special envoy for climate is perhaps Biden’s way of signaling that he takes climate change seriously – as Democrats up until now tragically have not. I say it’s “Biden’s way” because it’s not necessarily a good way to show a commitment to taking serious action on climate – Kerry has “stature” and “experience”, and, thank God, actually does believe in the reality of climate change (unlike the present administration). But he is also known as a man long on words and short on actions. Even worse, Kerry favors an approach to dealing with climate change that rests on commodifying and selling nature rather than preserving it as our common inheritance.
He recently published an op-ed explaining “how to better tackle climate change” which focused entirely on nudging the free market into putting a price on carbon. Nothing about how to deal with the equity effects of carbon pricing (ie making sure the financial burden doesn’t end up falling on the poor). Nothing about the federal government taking action to convert the electric grid, shutting down fossil fuel-reliant power stations, and investing in renewable energy. Nothing about a Green New Deal. And given Kerry’s record of defending the expansion of US fossil fuel production under Obama, he’s very unlikely to get tough on the companies most responsible for the problem. Climate activists should be incredibly concerned by the appointment of Kerry, who may acknowledge that the problem exists, but will almost certainly attempt phony business-friendly “solutions” and half-measures. It will require a huge fight to get the Biden administration to take real action.www.theguardian.com/...
It said there had been a “growth spurt” in the average CO2 level for the whole of 2019, rising by more than the average rate over the last decade. The data shows action to cut emissions is currently far from what is needed to avoid the worst impacts of the climate emergency.
Scientists calculate that emissions must fall by half by 2030 to give a good chance of limiting global heating to 1.5C, beyond which hundreds of millions of people will face more heatwaves, droughts, floods and poverty. Nations had pledged to ramp up their emissions cuts at a UN summit in Glasgow this month but the meeting has been postponed by a year due to Covid-19.
“The lockdown-related fall in emissions is just a tiny blip on the long-term graph. We need a sustained flattening of the curve,” said Petteri Taalas, the WMO secretary-general. “We breached the global [annual] threshold of 400ppm in 2015 and, just four years later, we have crossed 410ppm. Such a rate of increase has never been seen in the history of our records.
Talaas said a “complete transformation of our industrial, energy and transport systems” was needed. “The changes are economically affordable and technically possible and would affect our everyday life only marginally,” he said. “It is welcome that a growing number of countries and companies have committed themselves to carbon neutrality. There is no time to lose.”
“CO2 remains in the atmosphere for centuries. The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration was 3m-5m years ago, when the temperature was 2-3C warmer and sea level was 10-20 metres higher than now. But there weren’t 7.7 billion [human] inhabitants.”
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