Carbon dioxide levels fell 17 percent in April of this year compared to 2019, though the sudden drop isn’t expected to last.
It turns out that coronavirus is having more widespread effects that many of us probably imagined when early headlines started spilling from China in January.
The international lockdown and social distancing measures that are currently still in place have caused many businesses to shut down or temporarily pause operations. Worldwide shipping, transport, manufacturing, and power generation have all been significantly scaled back as a result, causing a dip in carbon dioxide emissions that brought them back down to 2006 levels in April of this year according to a report published by the journal Nature Climate Change.
Aviation also saw a cutback by 60 percent. Airline companies have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, with top company executives warning that the industry could effectively be ‘killed off’ by long term quarantine. That’s worrying for many jobs and businesses of course, but the positives to our planet’s health can’t be ignored.