(This thread is only about global warming/climate change, unrelated to any other coronavirus aspect):
Right now, there is a whole lot less travel, far less airplanes flying, trade is disrupted, people are staying at home instead of driving on the road, etc. In other words, far less carbon being emitted.
If this level of restriction (virus or no virus) went on indefinitely, forever, would that be tough enough an approach, as is, to solve the climate-change problem, or do we need a lockdown even more severe than this?
Yes, but that’s like asking if it’s possible that continuing to eat fast food for every meal, never exercising and amputating your limbs is a possible way to reach your “goal weight”.
My guess would be no. The reason is that to really fix the climate crisis, we need to really drastically reduce CO2 emissions, and the shutdown isn’t doing enough of that.
China went through a 2-month lockdown and their emissions only dropped by about 25%. They need to drop by 90%+ to avert the climate crisis. I haven’t seen any estimates for the rest of the world, but I’d be surprised if anywhere has had even had a 50% drop.
For the amount of reduction in CO2 needed to remain within acceptable limits of climate change, I’ve seen estimates of 40-70% by the IPCC.
I’ve seen figures of around 25% reduction in China and Italy at the peak of lockdown, and much less for the US. So even the current amount of reduction isn’t anywhere close to that required to “fix” climate change.
There have been some beneficial local effects – I’ve seen some remarkable before-and-after pictures of some major cities – I believe LA and Beijing – showing how much clearer the local atmosphere is. But no, in terms of carbon reduction, it’s not nearly enough. One of the major polluters, for example, are coal-fired power plants in those countries still running them, and they’re pretty much operating as usual.
But I think it’s ill-advised to talk about the lockdown in terms of climate change, because it’s a connection that some people may interpret the wrong way. The lockdown is causing the economy to crater and many millions of people are suffering, not just economic hardships but many other kinds of stresses as well. It’s a horrible situation, but there’s not much choice in this unprecedented pandemic. But my point is that no one should be led to believe that climate change mitigation involves anything remotely like this, but rather, a robust economy in which economically viable transitions are continuously being made to clean energy. Examples are the increasing popularity of electric cars, or the transition that Ontario made years ago to nuclear power, with the decommissioning a few years ago of the very last of the coal-burning power plants. The air is cleaner, people are healthier, and electricity is in ample supply. That’s an example of what climate change mitigation is really all about.
Humanity won’t have low-pollution energy anytime soon. Billions in the underdeveloped world (including parts of the US) still inefficiently burn cellulose (plant wastes and wood) or dung, coal if they can get it, petroleum if they can steal it. Even northern California’s Sacramento Valley fills with home woodsmoke in the winter, from folks who can’t afford sufficient natural gas or electric power.
Sure, we’ll have clean fusion power in 20 years. Or maybe 20 years after that. Maybe. Till then, don’t inhale.
Maybe not “fix” the human-caused component (I believe that mass deforestation and draining of swampland is the main contributors here) but definitely slow it down.
That document is 6 years old. In the meantime, carbon emissions have gone up. At best they haven’t gone up as much as they would without various efforts to curb GHG, but still up. And that’s just to keep the amount of global warming to less than 2°C. Even if we keep warming under that level, the climate crisis is still going to be with us. I think my call to drop emissions by 90%+ is closer to what we need to do to fix the crisis.
And it’s all going to be temporary. China is already opening up, so their emissions are going to rebound. Probably to more than they were before, as they may try to keep to their GDP target. Those pre-epidemic targets should be dust-binned but likely some Chinese managers will try to keep to them anyway.
Right. Emissions are already going back up from China. While other places have closed down, the overall effect is probably way less than 25% on a global scale.
At any rate, the OP asked “what if current reductions went on indefinitely.” The fact that even the maximum level seen so far wouldn’t put much of a dent in things demonstrates the severity of the problem.
Long-term, even after the restrictions are lifted, there might still be some reduction of usage. There are probably some folks who started working at home, teleconferencing, etc. due to the restrictions, who find that it works well enough that they’ll continue to do so even after they don’t need to any more.
Even if we shut off every atmospheric-carbon producing transportation (28% of greenhouse gas emissions) and industrial process (22%) today, it would not “fix” global warming, the effects of which we are already experiencing to a degree that will not be reversible for centuries or millennia, e.g. the melting of long lived glaciers and permafrost, the acidification of oceans, et cetera. At best, those reductions (which are unsustainable for obvious reasons) would just bring us in line with targets to maybe stay below the +2.0 ℃ threshold. There are some other atmospheric pollutants that this is significant in reducing such as sulfur dioxide and carbon particulates, but of course those will go back up once economies open up.
An actual fix for global climate change would require a ground up rebuild of our transportation and industrial infrastructure, the development and adoption of new materials and production methods with reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and the aggressive reforestation of land not needed for agriculture, as well as severe limits on population growth in emerging countries and adopting energy efficient appliances and building standards in industrialized countries to reduce their outsized carbon footprint. In other words, a “Green New Deal”, which is something that leaders in both major political parties in the United States (which is the leading per capita greenhouse gas emitter, and therefore should be the leader in developing and adopting mitigating technologies and social changes) are unified in opposing because…I don’t know, I guess it’s too impractical or hard to think about or something. It seems to be about the only issue that Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein can agree upon.
It’s definitely true. I know nobody wants this or thinks this would even make sense, but I personally think it’s good for the world to slow down and take a breather. There is a reason why God made the sabbath day (rest day)…this also exists in farming…you have to give the soil a chance to replenish it’s nutrients…I think the world could use a major slow down in everything.
But sadly, this won’t be the long-term answer obviously. We can’t sustain this. So over the long-term, other methods will have to be used if we are going to reverse climate change.
I just saw on the news that many parts in the US has had it’s hottest recorded ever April.
A few days ago saw another report that the ozone layer had healed in a part over the south pole where it was once depleted. Amazing.