The devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have had a short-term impact on carbon emissions, but not enough to move Schroders’ Climate Progress Dashboard, which remains unchanged in implying a long-term temperature rise of 3.9°C in its latest quarterly update.
In the first quarter, as the world battled the pandemic, China’s carbon emissions dropped by around a quarter over a four-week period in February. Industry and transport, which create more than one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, have virtually ground to a halt. It looks likely that 2020 will mark the fourth year in three decades in which global emissions fall, and it will quite possibly be the largest reduction ever seen.
However, Andrew Howard, head of
