BEGIN AGAIN

Economies will recover once the COVID-19 crisis is over. Chances are that emissions will bounce back, too

- TARUN GOPALAKRISHNAN

REGARDLESS OF the course the COVID-19 crisis takes, future commentators will link our response to it with the global climate emergency. If we fail to respond adequately to the pandemic, they will point at our planet-wide failures on climate change as a forerunner and an indicator of our inability to act together in dealing with a global crisis. If we manage to respond adequately, they will link the pandemic to the long-desired good of carbon mitigation, because dealing with COVID-19 will involve social distancing and result in a huge loss of economic activity, thereby reducing emissions.

The links, however, are tenuous, at least at the global level. Though China’s response to the crisis led to an 18 per cent reduction in carbon emissions between February and mid-March, the evidence on the strength of the link between COVID-19 and global emission reduction is still mixed. For one, the World Meteorological Organization reports that at several key observation sites, emissions levels for February 2020 were higher than they were in February 2019, perhaps because industries across the world had not yet stopped production. Secondly, the economic impact is currently being projected in terms of general indicators such as GDP, stock prices and job losses. The differentiated impacts between sectors (such as oil and renewables) will take more time to become clear. As expected, oil demand and prices have taken a beating. But the global oil market is still relatively diversified compared to renewables manufacturing, which is dominated by China.