THE coronavirus pandemic might feel like the biggest crisis most of us have ever faced, but you have already been living with a bigger one: climate change.
There has been a lot of excitement about the falling levels of air pollution being seen in many countries because of lockdowns to tackle the virus. Already, people are talking about using the pandemic as an opportunity to redesign city streets, providing more space for cyclists and pedestrians while reducing the emphasis on cars. Could this be the start of a green revolution?
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Maybe. It would be fantastic to make climate lemonade from virus lemons, but we need to go much further than a few cycle lanes. An analysis published by the Carbon Brief website last week found that, while there has been a drop in carbon emissions as a result of the pandemic, annual average carbon dioxide concentrations will still increase this year, contributing to a rise in global temperatures. The increase will be smaller than it would have been without the pandemic, but only by 11 per cent.
The problem is that by warming Earth, we have reduced the ability of tropical ecosystems to absorb carbon. So even when our emissions go down, more CO2 remains in the atmosphere than would have happened without that warming.
鈥淲e can鈥檛 afford to tackle our crises one at a time, and we can鈥檛 let politicians off the hook on climate change鈥�
It is now getting more serious. As we report on page 19, some parts of the planet are reaching temperatures that the human body can鈥檛 survive. These conditions occur for only a few hours at a time, but the longer we delay action, the longer that period will grow.
Governments around the world are rightly focused on tackling the immediate threat of the coronavirus, but this will occupy them for months, if not years. We can鈥檛 afford to tackle our crises one at a time, and we can鈥檛 let politicians off the hook on climate change.
That means the UK government鈥檚 plan for green heating, which will take 1500 years to hit official targets isn鈥檛 good enough. It also means the ongoing weakening of the US Environmental Protection Agency is a huge mistake. And most of all, it means that we must never forget that the planet is warming, and will keep warming, until we actually take action.
