The new coronavirus pandemic crisis was just a parenthesis of the climate, and global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, have returned to near normal levels, further reducing the time left for preventing climate change, warns a report published today.
The pandemic has halted much of global economic activity, which is heavily dependent on fossil fuel combustion, leading to a spectacular 5.4% drop in total emissions by 2020.
But in 2021, these emissions are expected to increase by 4.9%, reaching a level just 1% below the absolute record of 2019, according to the report of the Global Carbon Project, which is published today on the occasion of COP26. An international team of scientists is studying the “carbon budgets” on a global scale, ie the amount of CO2 emitted for a given result.
Despite promises of “green” plans for recovery from the new coronavirus pandemic, the return of emissions to pre-pandemic levels is attributed above all to fossil fuels: emissions due to coal burning are expected to exceed those of 2019, if and will remain below their record set in 2014; those due to gas combustion will break records.
Emissions due to oil combustion – projected to increase by 4.4% in 2021 – have not returned to the level of 2019. But the authors of the study emphasize that the transport sector has not yet returned to the level of activity before pandemic, so growth is likely to accelerate.
The result is that “carbon budgets” do not exceed the targets of the Paris Agreement, or in other words the increase in world temperature in relation to the pre-industrial era to remain below 2 ° Celsius and if possible at 1.5 ° Celsius, they get worse dangerously. At the rate of 2021, in order to have a 50% chance that the temperature will not rise above 1.5 ° Celsius, there are only eight years of emissions left, 20 years to limit the temperature rise to 1.7 ° Celsius and 32 years to be limited to 2 ° Celsius.
To increase the probability to 66%, the remaining time is reduced even further: to 8 years to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 ° Celsius, to 16 years to limit it to 1.7 ° Celsius, to 27 years to be limited to 2 ° Celsius.
As a result, time is running out, as shown by the disasters attributed to climate change – floods, droughts, giant fires … – the endless lists of their victims, the displacement of populations, the threats of famine.
“The study is a ‘return to the reality of what is happening in the world as we discuss (…) ways to prevent climate change,'” Corinne Le Kerre, one of the authors, told AFP.
As the fall due to the new coronavirus pandemic “was never the result of structural change. “Leaving the car (temporarily) in the garage is not the same as changing it with an electric car.”
Given that no structural changes are being promoted, the “bounce” of the shows “was even bigger than I expected”, bids Glenn Peters of the International Center for Climate Studies, another of the report’s authors.
Given the current situation, “we can not just wait to see emissions increase again,” he explains, while before the pandemic, scientists hoped that in 2019 emissions would reach a peak, before they start to fall.
The geographical distribution in 2021 underscores their fears. China, which has the largest CO2 emissions since 2007, reaching about a quarter of the total, will see its share increase to 31% and emissions increase by 4% in 2021.
In fact, they may increase even more, as the country overcame the crisis of the new coronavirus pandemic before the others. China’s emissions increased by 1.4% in 2020, while those of the United States, the world’s second-largest CO2 emitter, fell by 10.6%, and those of the European Union, which ranks third, fell by 10.9%. % and those of India, which ranks fourth, by 7.3%.
The forecasts for 2021 speak of increases of 4%, 7.6%, 7.6% and 12.6% respectively.
The report’s authors call for “immediate action and global cohesion in the global response to climate change.”
They refer to a ray of hope. In 2010-2019, they recorded that in 23 countries – which account for about a quarter of global CO2 emissions – emissions fell as the economy grew. About half of these countries are economically highly developed, so they have the means, and the regulatory framework, to promote solutions.
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