The novel coronavirus pandemic draws several obvious parallels to World War II. Like the war, COVID-19 is taking lives, it’s devastating the economy, and major lifestyle changes are being required of people all over the world. One of the most interesting side effects of the coronavirus is the reduction in emissions in various areas on the planet — and according to new data, the coronavirus could actually cause the greatest emissions to drop the world has seen since World War II. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell 10.3% in 2020, the largest drop in emissions in the post-World War II era, as the coronavirus crippled the economy, according to a report released Tuesday by the Rhodium Group.
The economic fallout from the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 – especially in big emitting sectors like transportation, power and industry – resulted in a sharper emissions drop than the 2009 recession, when emissions slid 6.3%. The drop means that the United States would outperform its pledge made under the Copenhagen climate accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. Emissions will actually drop by 21.5% compared with 2005.
The data and predictions come from the Global Carbon Project, an organization that measures global greenhouse gas emissions and their causes. Rob Jackson, the organization’s chair and a professor at Stanford University told Reuters that carbon output could fall by more than 5 per cent year-on-year (a comparison of the time period of the coronavirus pandemic with the same dates the previous year). “I wouldn’t be shocked to see a 5 per cent or more drop in carbon dioxide emissions this year, something not seen since the end of World War II,” Jackson told Reuters. “Neither the fall of the Soviet Union nor the various oil or savings and loan crises of the past 50 years are likely to have affected emissions the way this crisis is.”
President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris accord, but President-elect Joe Biden has said he intends to rejoin as soon as he is inaugurated on Jan. 20. He plans to set the country on a path to net-zero emissions by 2050 but will first need to announce a target for reducing emissions by 2030. “With coronavirus vaccines now in distribution, we expect economic activity to pick up again in 2021, but without meaningful structural changes in the carbon intensity of the U.S. economy, emissions will likely rise again as well,” the report by the research group said.
