Why COVID19 Provides Hope For Climate Change

since march

as we all know we have been for the most

part trapped in our home

schools workplaces and more have shut

down due to coven 19.

businesses minimize in-person business

work is no longer done from a workplace

and people are shuttered inside their

homes

this has made the economy struggle and

caused unemployment to rise as people

stay home to prevent transmission of the

disease

however out of this economist’s

nightmare has risen a beautiful dream

from a climatologist’s perspective

recently things have been looking bleak

for environmentalists in the us

environmental regulations have been

loosened under the current

administration

we’ve pulled out of the world’s largest

environmental agreement the paris

climate accord

and 2019 was the second hottest year on

record and at the highest amount of

carbon dioxide released into the

atmosphere

of any year on record with 36.8 billion

tons being released

in 2020 it looked like things were going

to be no different until the coronavirus

pandemic

this world-changing event dropped carbon

emissions to their lowest rates in

years early in 2020. the societal

disruption caused by social distancing

caused global carbon emissions

to plummet 17 in the first three and a

half months of the year as compared to

even in incredibly industrialized

countries like china where there are

less strict environmental regulations

emissions have drastically reduced the

use of personal transportation

like cars has essentially ended as

people wait for a vaccine

vehicles for international

transportation like commercial airliners

have similarly

similarly fallen out of use as people

avoid travel

electron electricity has been used in

workplaces and businesses because of

their shutdown

as well which is further reduced carbon

emissions all these factors combined add

up to the unprecedented drop

in carpet emissions of 17

those 17 percent might not seem like a

lot it’s actually a huge

deal in carbon emissions imagine if you

were told to drive almost 20 percent

less

use 20 less electricity and pay the

extra 20

of attention to your carbon releasing

activities then imagine if you’d get

billions of other people to do it

controlling carbon emissions might not

seem hard as an individual to get an

entire society to do this at once in

almost perfect unison

is nearly impossible compare this to the

goals of the parents climate agreement

the goal of that with that accord was to

reduce global carbon emissions by 7.6

every year following this figure we

would have already reduced emissions by

over double what we need because we kept

up these levels and continued lower

rates of

the seventeen percent is a huge step

towards what we would need to do to slow

global warming

though this sharp drop in emissions

might not continue at its current pace

once social distancing restrictions are

completely nifty it does give us hope

even when our country was part of the

parents climate agreement and was

consciously making an effort to reduce

emissions

there was not a drop this great granted

there are some unusual circumstances at

play

however despite that there is still this

is still an unprecedented bouldering of

a mission

before this harbors of complacency might

deem the attempt to greatly lower carbon

emissions of fruitless venture

many deemed the task impossible choosing

the easy path of continuing to spike

down the slippery slope allowing

monumental climate change to happen

however now there’s no excuse for

complacency the drop in carbon emissions

caused by the quarantine

has shown that large scale societal

movements away from high carbon

emissions

are possible well if only they have the

right motivation

global warming has the potential to kill

off most of the species on earth

make agriculture difficult and make our

earth nearly uninhabitable

why can’t people find as much motivation

in this long-term threat as they do in

the immediate demand of corona virus

it is true that people will not be

quarantined at home forever and someday

they will have to return using personal

transportation

going to work and traveling all over the

world

however the proof remains we do have the

ability to lower our carbon footprint if

we put our collective minds to it

no more are the excuses that these goals

are unrealistic

with this knowledge everyone should know

that they can change their carbon

emissions for the better

though this drop may be temporary it

will be a long-standing obelisk of how

it is possible for us to reduce carbon

emission

and how we can reverse global warming