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CARBON EMISSIONS

COVID-19 carbon cuts

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 1, page 279 (2020)Cite this article

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Strict government policies have been put in place to limit the spread of COVID-19. In many nations, population confinement has been used as one such measure, resulting in drastically modified energy use owing to, for example, shifts in transportation patterns or industrial operations. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions can therefore also be expected to have changed during the pandemic.

While these CO2 reductions represent environmental benefits, the total ‘savings’ are consistent with those needed year-on-year to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement. Thus, the extreme measures during the COVID-19 pandemic also act to highlight the fundamental changes needed to constrain impacts from anthropogenic climate change. Moreover, post-crisis rebounds in emissions may counter or restore emissions along original trajectories, demonstrating the influence of political and economic stimuli in dictating emissions trajectories well beyond 2020.

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  1. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment https://www.nature.com/natrevearthenviron

    Graham Simpkins

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  1. Graham Simpkins
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Correspondence to Graham Simpkins.

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Simpkins, G. COVID-19 carbon cuts. Nat Rev Earth Environ 1, 279 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-020-0062-x

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