Coronavirus and climate change: A tale of two crises / Coronavirus could cause fall in global CO2 emissions

ENVIRONMENT

Coronavirus and climate change: A tale of two crises

Coronavirus has cut emissions faster than years of climate negotiations. Does the outbreak reveal what life might be like if we were to act seriously on climate change? Or what it might be like if we don't?

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-climate-change-pollution-environment-china-covid19-crisis/a-52647140

   

China, the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter, has no plans to cut its emissions anytime soon. Under its Paris Agreement pledges, Beijing has promised to hit peak emissions  by 2030. So for the next decade, they're only going to go up.

Yet suddenly, this colossal, coal-powered economy has slashed emissions by 25%, according to numbers crunched by Lauri Myllyvirta at the University of Helsinki's Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. Not because of the climate crisis, but the COVID-19 public health emergency.

"For something like this to happen virtually overnight is very much unprecedented," Myllyvirta told DW.

Wuhan, the 11 million-strong Hubei province city at the center of the coronavirus outbreak has been on lockdown since late January. With businesses and factories in the province shuttered, and hundreds of millions of people across the country rendered immobile by sweeping travel restrictions, the atmosphere above China in NASA satellite images appears virtually clean of nitrous oxide emissions.

NASA data showing nitrous oxide before and after China put the breaks on its economy to contain coronavirus

NASA data shows a dramatic fall in nitrous oxide, a pollutant emitted from fossil fuels, after China put the breaks on its economy to contain coronavirus

Around the world, the aviation industry is predicting significant losses, British airline Flybe has collapsed, sporting events and international conferences have been cancelled, schools closed. Economists are warning of possible recession in Chinese trading partners Germany and Japan, while global growth is predicted to slow and oil demand has fallen faster than at any time since the 2008 financial crash.

All this looks like good news for the planet — at least in the short term. "Suppose you were a policymaker, and you were thinking about what you would do to lower emissions — you just got a pretty good instruction," says Amy Jaffe, director of the Council on Foreign Relations' Energy Security and Climate Change program.

Learning to localize

Jaffe says the virus is prompting us to change our habits in ways that could make a longer-term contribution to climate protection — working from home, video conferencing, working shorter weeks or staggering office hours to reduce traffic.

Empty Beijing intersection

The streets of normally bustling Beijing were deserted in early February when the Chinese government extended the new year holiday to tackle the CORVID-19

Empty tables at street cafe

Towns and villages in Italy have emptied as the virus has spread

Companies might also conclude that what's good for the planet — localized production — is a sensible way to protect their supply chains from all kinds of risk, such as extreme weather events linked to climate change.

"They really need to go and think about all these events that could actually disrupt their supply chain and think about what they're going to do to make it more resilient," Jaffe told DW.

Still, the biggest share of emissions saved in China over recent weeks comes from the slowdown in manufacturing, and that's something few politicians would advocate as official policy beyond an immediate crisis.

Smokestack rebound?

In China, Myllyvirta says the pressure to resume business as usual is so great there have been reports of local governments ordering workerless factories to run their machines just to use up power, with the expectation that their superiors will be looking at electricity consumption as a sign of recovery.

After the 2008 financial crash, "which also led to a dramatic drop-off in China's emissions and marked improvement in air quality because export industries went into freefall," Myllyvirta says the government launched a massive, construction-heavy stimulus program that saw emissions surge.

Such stories don't bode well for the climate in a post-crisis scenario when the country is keen to get the economy back up and running.

Worker wears a facemask at a Chinese factory

Chinese factories may be expected to make up for lost time as the Chinese economy gets going again

Myllyvirta says state investment in "smokestack industries" geared to maintaining the country's growth target could see rebound emissions more than cancel out savings over the last few weeks. He hopes China might instead opt for a path of slower, "high quality" growth, based on services, household consumption and investment in green technology and renewables.

Others argue that boosting consumption always comes at a cost to the planet, and the global obsession with expanding GDP makes little more sense than running empty production plants just to get the numbers up.

A managed contraction

"The only time we see emissions significantly reduce is when countries — or the globe — goes into recession," says Jon Erickson, an ecological economist at the University of Vermont's Gund Institute who studies emerging infectious disease vectors in relation to climate change.

"These moments really point to how intimately greenhouse gas emissions are tied to economic growth," Erickson told DW.

While recessions are good for the climate, they're terrible for people — particularly those who already benefit least from our fossil-fuel economies. Among the hardest hit by China's coronavirus response are low-waged migrant workers already living precarious lives.

Street-food sellers wear facemasks on an otherwise deserted street in Bangkok's Chinatown

The economic impact of coronavirus has rippled out well beyond China's borders. Business is slow in Bangkok's Chinatown, which would normally be flooded with tourists

Harbor lit up at night

Global supply chains have been disrupted by the virus

Yet advocates of a managed contraction of economic activity to protect the climate say shocks like the current outbreak illustrate the stark choices before us.

"We never want to do things in crisis mode," Erickson says. Instead, we have a "five to 10 year window" to "completely transform the economy so that the worst side of the contraction can be reduced, so that we can protect those who are most vulnerable."

If that sounds ridiculously optimistic, recent weeks at least suggest that when a crisis is deemed urgent enough, the world can act big and fast.

"If we truly treat climate as an emergency, as we are treating this pandemic as an emergency, we have to have a similar level of international coordination," Erickson says, starting with rapid scaling-back of fossil fuel investments.

A taste of future crises

Transmitting person-to-person and sending economic tremors across six continents, coronavirus has highlighted how closely interconnected our global community is. The ripple effect through supply chains also reveals our collective responsibility for emissions, as China's factories supply businesses and consumers in the West.

Neglecting that responsibility could mean crashes and crises far more painful than anything we've seen yet.

People wear facemasks at the Tokyo strockmarket

Japan is among the countries that could be hard hit by the economic fallout from coronavirus

With a global death toll of over 3,000, COVID-19 still appears far less deadly than fossil fuels, which, according to a recent study that Myllyvirta co-authored for Greenpeace, are responsible for 4.5 million air pollution-related deaths each year, aside from climate impacts. But scientists warn that warmer, wetter conditions are increasing the probability of such outbreaks. No one knows how deadly the next one might be.

"This is an opportunity to talk about planned economic stabilization, and talk about planned degrowth," Erickson says. "The economy will contract, it will hit limits, it will crash, it will collapse on its own. That's going to hurt the most."

Antarctica Melts Under Its Hottest Days on Record (Earth Observatory/ NASA)

CATASTROPHES TRIGGERED BY WARMING OCEANS

A California day at the South Pole

In Antarctica, scientists measured temperatures on par with Los Angeles. In February, a record 18.3 degrees Celsius (64.9 degrees Fahrenheit) was measured at the Argentinean research station Esperanza Base in the north Antarctic. This was the highest temperature since measurements began there, according to NASA. The warm weather led to quickly developing melt ponds (pictured right).

Climate change is causing the oceans to heat up rapidly. This not only has dramatic consequences for marine life, but also means there will be more extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods and forest fires. (02.03.2020) 

Date 05.03.2020

Author Ruby Russell

Related Subjects Environment, Recession, People's Republic of China, Climate Change, Coronavirus

Keywords corona, Coronavirus, climate change, environment, emissions, China, economic growth, degrowth, recession, supply chains

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Coronavirus could cause fall in global CO2 emissions

Responses to outbreak also show how government policy and behavioural changes can have impact

Jonathan Watts

 @jonathanwatts

Tue 10 Mar 2020 17.05 GMTFirst published on Tue 10 Mar 2020 13.00 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/10/coronavirus-could-cause-fall-in-global-co2-emissions

Evidence is mounting that carbon emissions are reducing due to coronavirus.

 Evidence is mounting that carbon emissions are reducing due to coronavirus. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Governments should act with the same urgency on climate as on the coronavirus, leading campaigners say, as evidence mounts that the health crisis is reducing carbon emissions more than any policy.

The deadly virus outbreak, which has killed more than 4,000 people and infected more than 116,000, has caused alarm around the world. However, unlike the response to global heating, it has shown how political and corporate leaders can take radical emergency action on the advice of scientists to protect human wellbeing.

In China – the source of the disease and the world’s largest carbon emitter – the actions taken by authorities have inadvertently demonstrated that hefty 25% carbon dioxide cuts can bring less traffic and cleaner air with only a small reduction in economic growth, according to a study by Carbon Brief.

If this trend continues, analysts say it is possible this will lead to the first fall in global emissions since the 2008-09 financial crisis. Even a slowdown in CO2 could buy time for climate action and, more importantly, inspire long-term behavioural changes – particularly in travel.

On the advice of health authorities, millions of people are avoiding school journeys, shopping runs and office commutes. Tens of thousands of flights have been cancelled. Italian bishops are not conducting mass. Across much of central China, factories have been closed, with knock-on effects around the world.

The virus has disrupted several events linked to the fossil fuel industry. In the past few weeks, the Geneva Motor Show was cancelled, after Switzerland banned all public gatherings of more than 1,000 people. In Houston, the giant annual CeraWeek gathering of oil and gas executives was called off, as was the Formula One grand prix in Shanghai.

More carbon savings will come from the cancellations of international conferences. Donald Trump has postponed a 14 March summit with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The London Book Fair, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Adobe’s annual live summit and even South by Southwest, the huge annual film, music and media conference in Austin, Texas, have all been called off, which means thousands of tonnes less CO2 from flights taken by international delegates.

The worlds of entertainment, fashion and sport are similarly affected. Stormzy, Mariah Carey, Slipknot and New Order have all cancelled or postponed gigs, though most of the attendees were likely to have been local so the climate impact will be more modest. A bigger effect is likely to come from the postponement of Art Dubai, the biggest art fair in the Middle East. The closure for several weeks of Tokyo Disneyland and Disneysea, or the Universal Studios theme park in Osaka, Shanghai Disneyland and other attractions that usually draw tens of thousands of visitors every day, are also expected to result in fewer flights.

Global air traffic decreased by 4.3% in February with cancellations of tens of thousands of flights to affected areas. But Rob Jackson, the chair of Global Carbon Project, said this would only be meaningful if it led to long-term behavioural change, particularly in aviation, which is one of the fastest growing source of emissions.

“If this could change the way we travel, it could lead to more virtual meetings,” he said. Otherwise, “I see no silver lining to the coronavirus. If gas emissions drop temporarily then great, but it won’t be a meaningful change in the long term unless it shocks us in a global recession. Nobody wanted that in 2008 and nobody wants it now.”

There are encouraging signs. The 189-nation International Monetary Fund and its sister lending organisation, the World Bank, will replace their usual spring gathering in Washington with a virtual teleconference. This is a one-off emergency measure, but the economic and carbon savings could prompt calls for this to become the norm every year.

The question is whether changes are temporary. China’s climate gains – so far estimated at about 200 megatonnes of CO2 – could be short-lived if factories later reopen and crank up production to make up for lost business. President Xi Jinping has indicated the government will provide extra stimulus packages to help the economy recover. Some reports suggest this could prove counterproductive for the climate if this means ramping up coal production or relaxing environmental controls. The last time China suffered a major threat to GDP growth was during the 2008-9 financial crisis. Within a year, extra government spending ensured both the economy and CO2 were back on an upward trajectory.

Analysts say it is too early to know if coronavirus will push global CO2 emissions onto the downward path that is needed if the world is to have any hope of keeping global heating to a relatively safe level of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. That depends on how far the outbreak spreads, and whether the economic effects are prolonged.

Corinne Le Quéré, professor of climate change science at the University of East Anglia, said that so far the crisis is only likely to slow CO2 growth, not reverse it. “Over the past 10 years, emissions have grown at an annual rate of 1%, or about 317 megatonnes, so you would need a really big reduction to see a fall this year. It’s plausible but I don’t think we can say at this stage.”

But, Le Quéré noted, even a slowdown would gain time for action – advances in technology, lower renewables prices and more public pressure on governments to change tack. The response to the coronavirus could also demonstrate that radical steps can work.

“You can see that when governments see there is an emergency they act straight away with measures commensurate with the threat. That assessment has not yet been made in the case of climate change although governments have declared it an emergency,” she said.

If the outbreak continues, there are concerns that the virus could also force the cancellation of the EU-China summit in Leipzig in September, which would be bad news for diplomatic efforts to build a climate alliance between these two powers.

Evening traffic in Brussels. Analysts suggest that the coronavirus outbreak may influence future travel patterns, perhaps by demonstrating how more people can work from home.

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 Evening traffic in Brussels. Analysts suggest that the coronavirus outbreak may influence future travel patterns, perhaps by demonstrating how more people can work from home. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

US author and environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote that no environmentalist should welcome a crisis, but they could learn from it: “Completely apart from the human toll, economic disruption is not a politically viable way to deal with global warming in the long term, and it also undercuts the engines of innovation that bring us, say, cheap solar panels.”

But McKibben is more optimistic about the demonstration that people can change. “It’s worth noting how nimbly millions of people seem to have learned new patterns. Companies, for instance, are scrambling to stay productive, even with many people working from home.

“The idea that we need to travel each day to a central location to do our work may often be the result of inertia, more than anything else. Faced with a real need to commute by mouse, instead of by car, perhaps we’ll see that the benefits of workplace flexibility extend to everything from gasoline consumption to the need for sprawling office parks.”