Christiana Figueres: Covid-19 has given us the chance to build a low-carbon future
The air is clean and
fresh, fish have reappeared in urban waterways, birds are frequenting uncut
gardens, wild mammals are meandering through cities and greenhouse gas
emissions will likely drop by an unprecedented 8%
this year. Nature has clearly benefited from several months of dramatically
reduced economic activity. From a climate crisis perspective, this drop in
emissions is astonishingly close to the 7.6%
yearly reduction in emissions that scientists have advised will be
necessary during the next decade. And yet none of this is cause for
celebration.
The resilience of
nature is temporary, and will last only as long as the lockdown is enforced.
More importantly, the reduction in greenhouse gases is not the result of
decarbonising the economy, but the unintended consequence of economic paralysis
that has come with painful human consequences and huge costs to lives and
livelihoods. This is not what addressing the climate crisis looks like. The
thoughtful reduction of greenhouse gases has to be intentional not
circumstantial, sustained not temporary. Above all, it must lead to improved
human wellbeing, not to human or economic suffering.
There is a second
inadvertent link between climate crisis and the coronavirus pandemic that is
perhaps less examined. The recovery packages designed and implemented by
governments to rescue the ailing global economy could rise as high as $20tn
over the next 18 months. The scale of this stimulus will shape the contours of
the global economy over the next decade, if not longer....
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/01/covid-low-carbon-future-lockdown-pandemic-green-economy