Reynard Loki - Here’s a major lesson from the pandemic: We can save the planet from climate change

By Dilip -
Amidst all the terrible news about the spreading coronavirus epidemic, a scintillating fact has emerged that can energize the environmental movement: The global slowdown in human activity has given Mother Nature some time to take a much-needed breath of fresh air. Between travel restrictions, reductions in public transport and overall economic activity that generates emissions—such as coal burning, refining oil and producing steel—the climate is getting the kind of rest from destructive human activity it hasn’t gotten since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

The lockdown in China (the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases), for example, has cut the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 100 million metric tons in just two weeks, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief, a UK-based climate policy watchdog. That’s down a quarter from the same two-week period in 2019. Observations made by NASA and European Space Agency pollution monitoring satellites appear to confirm the analysis. They show a sudden and steep decrease in nitrogen dioxide (NO2)—an air pollutant emitted by power plants, factories and vehicles—over China during mid-February when the nation entered a quarantine.... read more:
https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/heres-a-major-lesson-from-the-pandemic-we-can-save-the-planet-from-climate-change/

 see also
From Siberia to Australia: the age of fire is the bleakest warning yet 
The Amazon is burning. The climate is changing. And we're doing nothing to stop it
World military expenditure grows to $1.8 trillion in 2018
300 banks & investors back the world’s most harmful agribusinesses to the tune of $44bn
John Sentamu - It’s time to act against the oil companies causing death and destruction
Capitalism and war: The money behind Sudan's most powerful militia
Michael Roberts: The top 1% own 45% of all global personal wealth; the bottom 50% own less than 1% // Global Economic Volatility and Socio Political Reactions
George Monbiot: Ayn Rand - A Manifesto for Psychopaths
Owen Jones: Why don’t we treat the climate crisis with the same urgency as coronavirus?
Wiped out: America's love of luxury toilet paper is destroying Canadian forests
REBECCA SMITHERS - We Researchers warn that toilet paper is becoming unsustainable
David Cox - The planet's prodigious poo problem
Restoring forests could capture 2/3rds of the carbon humans have added to the atmosphere
Noam Chomsky: Internationalism or Extinction (Universalizing Resistance)

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