Coronavirus lockdown did nothing for the apocalyptic dumpsterfire that'll be Climate Crisis.

There is no silver lining. Nature is not healing. Emissions are not reducing. But there is a solid lesson in this for all of us!

As I write this, several birds are chittering outside, one of them is being particularly melodious with its tune. Cute little sparrows and bulbuls frequent my rooftop plants all day long. I hear neither the constant thrum of vehicles nor the intermittent blast of aircrafts taking off from Kathmandu where I’m spending my pandemic lockdown. The pollution has visibly reduced and often we can clearly see the ring of snowcapped mountains encircling Kathmandu valley, one some days as far as Everest even, for the first time in several decades! The sunsets and sunrises over the mountains have been exceptionally clear, colorful and beautiful. If I were not obsessively reading about climate change for months already, I’d have rejoiced too -

NATURE IS HEALING! 😍

But, is it though?

Source: J. L. Westover

The internet loves an easy solution to an infinitely complex planetary crisis. When the animals started showing up in cities during the early days of the lockdown, tweet after tweet went viral. When China’s emissions dropped significantly during its strict lockdown, numerous news articles painted the drop in emissions as a welcome silver lining to the pandemic. Before we go into if there is any silver lining, let me tell you this below.

Three developments that happened during the pandemic lockdown that might shock you:

1. The atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration hit a record high in May. As in, it was the highest ever in the entire history of human civilisation. The Co2 concentration peaked at a daily high 417.16 parts per million and at a fractionally lower monthly high of 417.1 parts per million, the highest in millions of years. Yes, this happened despite the whole world shutting itself down for months. (*gasp!*)

   In fact, the last time atmospheric carbon dioxide was this high was 3 to 5 million years ago, on a version of this world we would find unrecognizable today. Sea levels were up to 65 feet (20 meters) higher, all sorts of weird animals roamed the Earth, and it was up to 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit (3.6 degrees Celsius) warmer than pre-industrial temperatures. Oh, and no humans. - Brian Kahn on Earther @ Gizmodo

2. May 2020 was the hottest May ever on record. April 2020 was the second hottest April ever on record. And 2020 is on track to becoming the hottest year ever since record keeping began, with meteorologists estimating there is a 50% to 75% chance that 2020 will break the record set four years ago. 2016 is the hottest year as of now, with 2019 coming in at a close second.

   The Earth had its hottest May ever last month, continuing an unrelenting climate change trend as 2020 is set to be among the hottest 10 years ever, scientists with the Copernicus Climate Change Service announced on Friday. “The last month has been the warmest May on record globally and this is unquestionably an alarming sign,” said Freja Vamborg, a scientist at Copernicus Climate Change Service. - Emma Newburger on CNBC

3. China reopened its economy and air pollution levels are worse than pre-coronavirus levels now, in an update that is a surprise to no one who follows emission spikes and reductions triggered by sudden global calamities. Both carbon emissions and air pollution levels will see a similar spike worldwide if there isn’t a concerted effort towards green recovery, which isn’t there at the moment.

   While air quality improved dramatically during The Quiet Time, new data shows it was short-lived. What’s more, air pollution is coming back at higher levels than during the same period last year. China has seen similar spikes after economic crises, including the SARS epidemic of 2003 and the global financial shitshow in 2008. Both times, the country prioritized dirty construction projects and burning of coal to jumpstart the economy. - Yessenia Funes on Earther @ Gizmodo

But how did this happen? Aren’t the emissions set to drop by a whopping 8% this year?

(Read: Emissions Declines Will Set Records This Year on NYTimes)

Because of the nature of carbon dioxide!

“People may be surprised to hear that the response to the coronavirus outbreak hasn’t done more to influence CO2 levels,” he said. “But the buildup of CO2 is a bit like trash in a landfill. As we keep emitting, it keeps piling up. The crisis has slowed emissions, but not enough to show up perceptibly at Mauna Loa. What will matter much more is the trajectory we take coming out of this situation.” - Ralph Keeling for The Guardian

To give you a very quick recap, extra Co2 has been piling up in the atmosphere since the dawn of second industrial revolution, i.e. 1850s. While the earth has a natural carbon cycle in place that is very much essential for life to thrive, human activity has disrupted that natural process by putting in way too much Co2 in the atmosphere than the natural carbon cycle can handle. So all the extra Co2 has been accumulating for decades, eventually reaching a stage where the extra greenhouse gases are warming up the atmosphere and causing a whole lot side-effects aka climate change.

The lifetime of carbon dioxide is anything between 20 to hundreds of years. If it is not removed from the atmosphere by natural or artificial processes, all the accumulated Co2 can stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years. What this means is that even though there has been a temporary halt on current emissions, all the historical emissions from before lockdown are still there in the atmosphere neatly warming up the planet as usual, without interruption.

And that’s why so many heat records were broken in 2020 despite the pandemic enforced shutdown of the economy and industries.

So hypothetically speaking, how long do we have to be in our current state of lockdown to achieve our target of 1.5 degree warming then?

Are you ready for this? Are you sure?

Make sure you are sitting so you don’t faint due to shock.

10 YEARS!

Yes, a whole freaking decade!

Here’s a fun fact for you: Emissions must drop 7.6 per cent per year from 2020 to 2030 for the still horrible but lesser of all evils 1.5°C warming goal, according to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC). This means it’ll take similar global lockdowns and all the associated suffering and societal upheavals of record-breaking unemployment rates, upward poverty and hunger spikes, displacement of informal sector workers and livelihoods, disruption of immunisation drives and global spikes of other preventable infectious diseases like TB, Polio, Measles etc every single year, if we are hellbent on “going back to normal”. Clearly only a monster would recommend a pandemic style lockdown for global emission reductions.

You must be now wondering that if even the great pandemic lockdown emission reductions aren’t enough, what is it going to take?

What many of us have been saying from the beginning - a complete restructuring of our economy and energy sectors. We can neither consume as we do today nor can we burn fossil fuels as we do today. We will have to live with less and redistribute wealth & resources so that poverty can be eliminated. Yeah, I know, it all sounds super utopian, but that’s what is required. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What does this mean for the whole individual action movement then? Everything we do to reduce personal emissions are essentially useless?

“But a deeper look shows that individual changes in behavior produce limited emission reductions. Much of the world stopped traveling, eating in restaurants and buying merchandise. It was an unmatched experiment and yet 80% of emissions were untouched.” - Benjamin Storrow for Scientific American

Umm, yes and no. If your individual contribution is only reducing your personal emissions, it is pretty much useless for the overall climate movement but it surely does help you personally with retaining some peace of mind and reducing the burden of guilt. On the other hand, if your individual contribution is also imagining a better world and demanding climate action & justice from our fellow citizens and leaders so we can all decarbonise, that would be a super helpful contribution. (I do both btw, whatever is possible within my personal capacity and available skills.)

Is there a silver lining to the Coronavirus lockdown at all then?

Maybe. Two things

1. Several tens of thousands deaths were prevented because of significant reduction in air pollution and improvement of air quality around the world during the lockdown. But hey, a lot more people also got killed by coronavirus and associated outcomes of ignoring other diseases, overburdened hospitals, hunger, unemployment etc etc. So maybe we shouldn’t consider this a silver lining at all?

2. The Coronavirus lockdown has showed us the severe limitations and inadequacy of the lifestyle changes and associated personal emissions reduction narrative. Now that that fog has lifted, we can all come to terms with the monumental course correction required to have a liveable planet in future and start demanding decarbonising our economy along with resilient and sustainable societies.

So what’s the learning for us?

That averting climate crisis will require massive public and political mobilisation. First step to solving a problem is acknowledging and understanding it, and I hope coronavirus has enormously helped us with it?

(Disclaimer: This newsletter won’t be easy reading by any means. I’m not here to sugarcoat the apocalypse for you. But I do want to help you understand this planetary disaster we are hurtling towards. Knowledge is power and fear, apparently, is the most powerful motivator. So, my plan is to generously shower you with these two.)

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This is the first of the 52 newsletters I plan to send out in 2020 covering all things climate crisis, including original reporting, opinion pieces and explainers. This newsletter and majority of my work on climate change communication so far has been funded by public contributions. If you’d like to support my work, you can contribute to my reporting fund, or buy a print.

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