Has closing off major parts of the economy avoided emissions at anything close to $100 per ton? Now let’s treat the shutdown caused by COVID-19 as if it were a carbon-reduction strategy. But many economists think this price reflects the true cost of greenhouse gases to society, and it also happens to be a memorable round number that makes a good benchmark for discussions. In reality, $100 per ton would still be pretty expensive.
For example, if you have a technology that costs $1 million, and using it lets you avert the release of 10,000 tons of gas, you’re paying $100 per ton of carbon averted. This figure-the cost per ton of carbon averted-is a tool that economists use to compare the expense of different carbon-reduction strategies. To see why, let’s look at what it costs to avert a single ton of greenhouse gases. In addition, these reductions are being achieved at, literally, the greatest possible cost. What’s remarkable is not how much emissions will go down because of the pandemic, but how little. And yet we are still on track to emit 92 percent as much carbon as we did last year. To put it mildly, this is not a situation that anyone would want to continue. “What’s remarkable is not how much emissions will go down because of the pandemic, but how little.” For months, air traffic virtually came to a halt. This April, car traffic was half what it was in April 2019. More than 600,000 people have died, and tens of millions are out of work.
Unfortunately, we can’t.Ĭonsider what it’s taking to achieve this 8 percent reduction. That’s a meaningful reduction, and we would be in great shape if we could continue that rate of decrease every year. In real terms, that means we will release the equivalent of around 47 billion tons of carbon, instead of 51 billion. Although these projections are certainly true, their importance for the fight against climate change has been overstated.Īnalysts disagree about how much emissions will go down this year, but the International Energy Agency puts the reduction around 8 percent. You may have seen projections that, because economic activity has slowed down so much, the world will emit fewer greenhouse gases this year than last year. Even as the world works to stop the novel coronavirus and begin recovering from it, we also need to act now to avoid a climate disaster by building and deploying innovations that will let us eliminate our greenhouse gas emissions. But the fact that dramatically higher temperatures seem far off in the future does not make them any less of a problem-and the only way to avoid the worst possible climate outcomes is to accelerate our efforts now. When disaster strikes, it is human nature to worry only about meeting our most immediate needs, especially when the disaster is as bad as COVID-19. I realize that it’s hard to think about a problem like climate change right now.
As awful as this pandemic is, climate change could be worse. But in just a few decades, the same description will fit another global crisis: climate change. Its effects are rippling across the world. It is causing a tragic number of deaths, making people afraid to leave home, and leading to economic hardship not seen in many generations.
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