CO2 emissions drop by record 8.8% in the first half of 2020



10/15/2020 4:30 AM


Global greenhouse gas emissions fell by about 8.8% in the first half of this year, which is a record high since the 2008 crisis, the 1979 oil shock and World War II.



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This was announced on Wednesday by the press service of the Potsdam Institute for the Study of Climate (PIK) with reference to an article in Nature Communications magazine.

“The largest emission reductions were associated with the land transport sector. Their incidence has dropped by about 40% worldwide thanks to work from home and other measures taken to combat the epidemic. In comparison, the drop in emissions from industry and energy was not as high, at 22% and 17%,” said Daniel Kammen, professor at the University of California at Berkeley (USA), quoted by the PIK press office.

The spread of coronavirus infection in China, and then throughout the rest of the world, has led not only to an overload of healthcare systems in dozens of different countries, but also to a sharp decrease in industrial production, car traffic and many other sources of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

The first observations of this decline, which scientists carried out this summer, showed that greenhouse gas emissions decreased by about 17% compared to winter and early spring 2019. Scientists expect global CO2 emissions to decline by about 4.4-5.3% over the entire current year.

source: reuters.com


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