Covid-19 and Green Recovery? Euronews

Economic shutdowns due to Covid-19 demonstrate a quieter world with cleaner air, wiht carbon emissions reduced by more than 8 percent between January and April from the same period in 2019. “This is massively significant: 8 per cent is roughly half of what America emits in an entire year and would be the biggest drop since the Second World War,” writes Darren McCaffrey for Euronews. For the world to meet the Paris Climate Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Centigrade would require cutting emissions by 8 percent every year for the next decade, McCaffrey notes. Costs of solar and wind power have fallen in recent years, and governments could provide incentives to use renewables and reduce subsidies for fossil fuels. The largest economies use the pandemic to re-embrace fossil fuels: The United States is lifting regulations, and China is reopening coal-fired power plants. McCaffrey concludes that the pandemic foreshadows the hardship to come with climate disasters. Humans can avoid disease, property destruction, food shortages and other consequences of climate change with investment and political will. – YaleGlobal