The first study of daily decreases in emissions during a pandemic was published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The conclusions can tell us a lot about global challenges that are yet to come. It was checked how the freezing of economies and the forced closure of humanity in homes affected greenhouse gas emissions. Economy sectors, individual countries and regions were compared, all day by day. The study did cover 69 countries, 50 states in the USA and 30 Chinese provinces It's 85 percent global population and 97 percent global emissions.

It turned out that the global emissions at shutdown at the peak of lockdown (April 7) fell by 17 percent, or 17 million tons. On average, emissions have dropped by 26 percent in each country (in Poland by 23 percent).

Considering that before the crisis, global emissions increased by an average of 1 percent per year, except for 2019, when they have not risen or fallen, this is quite a lot. As a result of the financial crisis in 2008-2009, global emissions fell by 1.4 percent in 2009. It is also the largest annual decrease in emissions since World War II.

Still, it won't affect the climate disaster. Compared to the scale of all greenhouse gas emissions to date, it will not affect also the further course of climate change. The more so that after the financial crisis carbon dioxide emissions rebounded and in 2010 increased by 5.1 percent. This time, we are also threatened with an emission increase.

"The decrease in emissions is significant, but illustrates the challenge of meeting our climate commitments from Paris. We need systemic changes using green energy and electric cars, not temporary reductions resulting from forced behavior,"professor Rob Jackson from Stanford University, head of the Global Carbon Project and co-author of the analysis, said.

(300gospodarka)