The coronavirus pandemic do not slow the relentless advance of climate change, according to the UN’s United in Science 2021 report.
Between January and July, global fossil fuel CO2 emissions in the power and industry sectors were already at the same level or higher in the same period in 2019, before the pandemic.
Overall emissions reductions in 2020, during the first COVID-19 wave, were a “brief lapse’’ the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other organisations said on Thursday.
The pandemic-related slump was widely accompanied by calls to rebuild the global economy in a more sustainable way.
“This report shows that so far in 2021, we are not going in the right direction,’’ WMO Secretary-General, Petteri Taalas said.
So far this year, CO2 emissions from road traffic had been below the levels before the pandemic outbreak.
However, concentrations of the major greenhouse gases that contributed to global warming continued to increase in 2020, and the first half of 2021, according to the report.
“We are still significantly off-schedule to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement,’’ UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres said with regard to the efforts to keep the global temperature rise well below two degrees Celsius.
According to UN figures, the global average, mean surface temperature for the period from 2017 to 2021 is among the warmest on record, estimated at 1.06 degrees Celsius to 1.26 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial (1850–1900) levels. By 2025, the value could climb up to 1.8 degrees, even if climate targets were met, sea levels could rise between 0.3 and 3.1 metres by 2300. (Xinhua/NAN)