As the human world all but ground to a halt in the latter half of 2020, scientists reported that global carbon dioxide emissions fell by 8 percent.
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Some wondered: Did the pandemic have a silver lining in reducing our overall CO2 emissions, the leading cause of the current climate crisis?
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Although this year’s drop is significant relative to the years before, it’s not so significant to outweigh the natural variation of carbon dioxide emissions from human and natural sources.
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To achieve the goals laid out by the Paris Agreement — to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celcius — scientists say we’d need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 3 to 7 percent per year.
One year of pandemic-induced reductions won’t cut it.
Read more about the ongoing climate crisis here.