A locked-down, pandemic-struck world cut its carbon dioxide emissions this year by 7 per cent, the biggest drop ever, new preliminary figures show.
The Global Carbon Project, an authoritative group of dozens of international scientists who track emissions, calculated that the world will have put 37 billion US tonnes (34 billion metric tonnes) of carbon dioxide in the air in 2020. That's down from 40.1 billion US tonnes (36.4 billion metric tonnes) in 2019, according a study published Thursday (US time) in the journal Earth System Science Data.
Scientists say this drop is chiefly because people are staying home, travelling less by car and plane, and that emissions are expected to jump back up after the pandemic ends. Ground transportation makes up about one-fifth of emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief man-made heat-trapping gas.
"Of course, lockdown is absolutely not the way to tackle climate change," said study co-author Corinne LeQuere, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia.