Perhaps we all still have very fresh memories of the emotions experienced last year as a result of the pandemic caused by COVID-19, among the anguish, fears and stress, I remember with some satisfaction some news about the recovery of some ecosystems as a result of the confinement of people, also as pollution decreased in some regions due to the economic slowdown, in a way I saw the pandemic as a respite for the planet. But the joy was short-lived, then we were polluting with more plastic than before the pandemic and recently the UN warned that greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated since this brief respite we gave the planet in 2020.
CO2 emissions increase after pandemic. Source: Pixabay.com.
So, it seems that we missed the opportunity to correct the course we were taking towards ecological disaster, and what is worse, we have accelerated the pace. This was recently made known by the UN in a report prepared by several agencies entitled "United in Science 2021", which states that there have been no signs of ecological growth and that greenhouse gas emissions remain at unprecedented levels, condemning the planet to a very dangerous global warming.
Source: World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
This agency has been pointing out that we are far behind the goal proposed in the Paris Agreement to achieve zero emissions by 2050, and we are rapidly approaching to exceed the agreed limit of 1.5 °C increase in global temperature by the end of the century. This is extremely dangerous, the increase in global temperature is causing climate change and extreme weather events across the planet, which has already had serious effects on economies and society, just torrential rains and heat waves have paralyzed hours of work and claimed hundreds of lives.
The increase in global average temperature is causing extreme weather phenomena. Source: piqsels.
This is not probable, experts from the IPCC, the panel of experts linked to the UN on climate issues, has been warning us for decades of the consequences of climate change, and considers it "unequivocal" that the responsibility for global warming lies with mankind. And it is especially due to the gases that are released when fossil fuels are burned to generate energy.
The United in Science 2021 report highlights that concentrations of gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), the main greenhouse gases, continued to increase in 2020 and grew rapidly the first half of 2021. It also notes that the overall decrease in emissions in 2020 is likely to have only limited the annual increase in atmospheric concentrations of these gases; but it also points out that this effect may have been too small to have made a significant difference to the environmental variable.
The UN Secretary General emphasized that "unless there are immediate and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, we will not be able to limit global warming by 1.5°C".
So the reduction in emissions that we had in 2020 was only a passing effect of the pandemic, now that many countries have opened their borders and economies are recovering, we see that the climate crisis has put the foot on the accelerator, but showed that immediate changes can generate a visible change, so countries should consider an economic recovery that includes the decarbonization of their energy systems in order to achieve the goal proposed in the Paris Agreement.
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