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