Rethinking the World After Covid (Opinion)

However, switching from dirty fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas has shown to be one of the key benefits of solving both problems.

The sky is clearer. And the future will be much safer.

Emission reduction

Before looking at a crystal ball about what a pandemic could do in the future of pollution and climate change, let’s consider the pollution reduction that happened at this time of this turmoil and hardship and death.

(Again, the method of doing this is wrong. Despite the unmistakable concrete environmental benefits realized in this case, a pandemic is not an environmental or planetary solution.)

Coronaviruses also affect climate change. Emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, mainly carbon dioxide, cause global warming and are the most dangerous to the planet and our future. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts CO2 emissions will decrease by 8% overall this year compared to 2019 due to the closing of trades related to COvid. “Not only is annual emissions projected to decline at an unprecedented rate in 2020, but that reduction will be almost double that of all previous reductions since the end of World War II.” The IEA wrote in the announced Global Energy Review 2020. In April.

The physics is partly responsible. It feels like a bathtub. Carbon dioxide accumulates in this bathtub, and it takes time to discharge it naturally. Scientists have measured atmospheric CO2 concentrations in parts per million (ppm), and have been observing them for decades at observatories in Hawaii and elsewhere. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations and water levels in bathtubs are expected to continue to increase this year, despite lowering CO2 emissions and pouring water.

To properly address the climate crisis, by the middle of the 20th century, the flow of water to the toilet should either be completely cut off or the net carbon emissions should be zero.

What the future will bring

Covid-19 does not stop global warming. We’ve been burning fossil fuels since the mid-1800s, and the system hasn’t changed. But we have reduced emissions a bit. It is already clear that the benefits of this change, especially the cleaner air, will be our motivation.

Optimistically, a pandemic created a sense of potential that could influence reality.

We can and should live in a city where the sky looks blue and the stars shine at night. A city with good streets, greenery, no odor of air, no hint of air, and quiet enough for machines to hear the birds. Because it’s a city with safe public transportation, I don’t sit on busy roads for hours every day.

Whether in urban or rural areas, it is necessary to have access to technologies (electric vehicles, solar power, wind power) that make this possible, not just in times of crisis.

Lights and air conditioners should be able to turn on, recognizing that they run on clean electricity rather than coal or gas, heating the planet and causing sea level rise, ice melting, and the worst heat waves.

By enacting carbon taxes and other policies that facilitate this change as soon as possible, we will be able to live free from the guilt and moral conflicts of the era of global warming.

Fossil fuel workers who have changed jobs may be retrained to work in other industries rather than being left behind. By doing so, we will clean the atmosphere and protect the forests that support the planet’s outstanding biodiversity. It allows us to walk towards a healthier and more vibrant world. Not garbage.

Such a big and much bigger leap can be achieved with international cooperation, carbon prices, tighter government regulation of the fossil fuel industry, and post-covid stimulus to help promote a low-cost economy. Completely clean up energy as soon as possible.

You can also start draining the coal tub and clean the city.

What the future will bring

However, these solutions would be difficult to implement in the current political environment.

“Without fundamental changes in global energy production, there should be no reason to expect sustainable reductions in emissions,” said Niclas Hagelberg, Climate Change Coordinator, United Nations Environment Program. It was .. “Instead, COVID-19 gives us the opportunity to understand the risks we are taking in our unsustainable relationship with the environment and seize the opportunity to rebuild our economy in a more environmentally responsible manner. Offers.”

It is naive to suspect that politicians, especially U.S. politicians, are still dealing with the pandemic, and the riots resulting from George Floyd’s police assassination in Minneapolis have made it possible to tackle other existential crises. Will be dizzy in: Climate emergencies – stable escalation of fatalities and economic free fall in Covid-19, rather than encouraging cleaner energy and cleaner skies We continue to support.

NASA scientists testified before the United States Senate in the late 1980s about the era of global warming. Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Maria, Fires in Australia and California, Immigration Crisis in Europe and Central America: The list of climate-affected disasters is long and unprecedented. I think we are insensitive to this destruction.

Aggravating disasters are becoming an accepted situation in reality, persistent smog.

We are too fast and a more dreadful “new normal” because the world is a pandemic that could do more to prepare for it, even when pollution and uncontrolled warming are far from normal. Can’t accept gradually.

Being concerned about the climate crisis and understanding that it poses a threat to future generations as well as the present, the challenge is for us to remember that things can change. It would be horrible if the deadly pandemic was what we needed to see it. But the promising consequences of this tragedy may be the public’s understanding that cleaner skies are possible. And with the right technology and clean energy policies, they are an element of modern life.