THIS POST IS A PRESENTATION OF THE IDEA FOUND IN VARIOUS PUBLISHED ARTICLES AND OPINIONS THAT SINCE THE COVID LOCKDOWN HAD CAUSED A MEASURABLE DECLINE IN FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS, THE APPROPRIATE CLIMATE ACTION IS AN EXTENDED CLIMATE LOCKDOWN.

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM: “IS A CLIMATE LOCKDOWN ON THE HORIZON?”

ARTICLE#1: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM/THE CONVERSATION/PIERS FORSTER: MARCH 2021

LINK: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/climate-change-leeds-scientist-lockdown-emissions-covid-planet/

WHAT THE ARTICLE SAYS: A year into the pandemic: 3 things we’ve learnt about the planet

Piers Forster is Professor of Physical Climate Change, Priestley International Centre for Climate, University of Leeds

Covid lockdowns created a drop in road traffic, and car emissions around the world. The sudden and unprecedented drop in human activity during lockdown, gave scientists a unique opportunity to study the planet, and climate change.
From the speed in which climate science operates in to lockdown’s initial warming effect, the period has offered some unexpected insights. Climate scientist Piers Forster explains the three major things we’ve learned from the Covid Lockdown as follows: “The planet had already warmed by around 1.2℃ since pre-industrial times when the World Health Organization officially declared a pandemic on March 11 2020. This began a sudden and unprecedented drop in human activity, as much of the world went into lockdown and factories stopped operating, cars kept their engines off and planes were grounded. Here’s how lockdowns slashed global emissions, according to NASA. Satellite photos showed COVID-19 lockdowns have impacted global emissions. There have been many monumental changes since then, but for those of us who work as climate scientists this period gave us some new and unexpected insights.

CLIMATE SCIENTIST PIERS FORSTER: “Here are three things we have learned”:

1. Climate science can operate in real time: The pandemic made us think on our feet about how to get around some of the difficulties of monitoring greenhouse gas emissions, and CO₂ in particular, in real time. When many lockdowns were beginning in March 2020, the next comprehensive Global Carbon Budget setting out the year’s emissions trends was not due until the end of the year. So climate scientists set about looking for other data that might indicate how CO₂ was changing. We used information on lockdown as a mirror for global emissions. In other words, if we knew what the emissions were from various economic sectors or countries pre-pandemic, and we knew by how much activity had fallen, we could assume that their emissions had fallen by the same amount. By May 2020, a landmark study combined government lockdown policies and activity data from around the world to predict a 7% fall in CO₂ emissions by the end of the year, a figure later confirmed by the Global Carbon Project. This was soon followed by research by my own team, which used Google and Apple mobility data to reflect changes in ten different pollutants, while a third study again tracked CO₂ emissions using data on fossil fuel combustion and cement production. The latest Google mobility data shows that although daily activity hasn’t yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, it has recovered to some extent. This is reflected in our latest emissions estimate, which shows, following a limited bounce back after the first lockdown, a fairly steady growth in global emissions during the second half of 2020. This was followed by a second and smaller dip representing the second wave in late 2020/early 2021. Meanwhile, as the pandemic progressed, the Carbon Monitor project established methods for tracking CO₂ emissions in close to real time, giving us a valuable new way to do this kind of science.

2. No dramatic effect on climate change: In both the short and long term, the pandemic will have less effect on efforts to tackle climate change than many people had hoped. Despite the clear and quiet skies, research I was involved in found that lockdown actually had a slight warming effect in spring 2020: as industry ground to a halt, air pollution dropped and so did the ability of aerosols to cool the planet by reflecting sunlight away from the Earth. The impact on global temperatures was short-lived and very small (just 0.03°C), but it was still bigger than anything caused by lockdown-related changes in ozone, CO₂ or aviation. Looking further ahead to 2030, simple climate models have estimated that global temperatures will only be around 0.01°C lower as a result of COVID-19 than if countries followed the emissions pledges they already had in place at the height of the pandemic. These findings were later backed up by more complex model simulations. Many of these national pledges have been updated and strengthened over the past year, but they still aren’t enough to avoid dangerous climate change, and as long as emissions continue we will be eating into the remaining carbon budget. The longer we delay action, the steeper the emissions cuts will need to be.

3. This isn’t a plan for climate action: The temporary halt to normal life we have now seen with successive lockdowns is not only not enough to stop climate change, it is also not sustainable: like climate change, COVID-19 has hit the most vulnerable the hardest. We need to find ways to reduce emissions without the economic and social impacts of lockdowns, and find solutions that also promote health, welfare and equity. Widespread climate ambition and action by individuals, institutions and businesses is still vital, but it must be underpinned and supported by structural economic change. Colleagues and I have estimated that investing just 1.2% of global GDP in economic recovery packages could mean the difference between keeping global temperature rise below 1.5°C, and a future where we are facing much more severe impacts – and higher costs. Unfortunately, green investment is not being made at anything like the level needed. However, many more investments will be made over the next few months. It’s essential that strong climate action is integrated into future investments. The stakes may seem high, but the potential rewards are far higher.
4. WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM: IS A CLIMATE LOCKDOWN ON THE HORIZON?

CLIMATE LOCKDOWN ARTICLE BY THE WORLD BUSINESS COUNCIL: OCT 2020

LINK TO SOURCE: https://www.wbcsd.org/Overview/Panorama/Articles/Avoiding-a-climate-lockdown

As COVID-19 spread earlier this year, governments introduced lockdowns in order to prevent a public-health emergency from spinning out of control. In the near future, the world may need to resort to lockdowns again – this time to tackle a climate emergency. Shifting Arctic ice, raging wildfires in western US states and elsewhere, and methane leaks in the North Sea are all warning signs that we are approaching a tipping point on climate change, when protecting the future of civilization will require dramatic interventions. Under a “climate lockdown,” governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling.

To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently.

Many think of the climate crisis as distinct from the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic. But the three crises – and their solutions – are interconnected. COVID-19 is itself a consequence of environmental degradation: one recent study dubbed it “the disease of the Anthropocene.” Moreover, climate change will exacerbate the social and economic problems highlighted by the pandemic. These include governments’ diminishing capacity to address public-health crises, the private sector’s limited ability to withstand sustained economic disruption, and pervasive social inequality. These shortcomings reflect the distorted values underlying our priorities. For example, we demand the most from “essential workers” (including nurses, supermarket workers, and delivery drivers) while paying them the least. Without fundamental change, climate change will worsen such problems. The climate crisis is also a public-health crisis. Global warming will cause drinking water to degrade and enable pollution-linked respiratory diseases to thrive. According to some projections, 3.5 billion people globally will live in unbearable heat by 2070. Addressing this triple crisis requires reorienting corporate governance, finance, policy, and energy systems toward a green economic transformation. To achieve this, three obstacles must be removed: business that is shareholder-driven instead of stakeholder-driven, finance that is used in inadequate and inappropriate ways, and government that is based on outdated economic thinking and faulty assumptions. Corporate governance must now reflect stakeholders’ needs instead of shareholders’ whims. Building an inclusive, sustainable economy depends on productive cooperation among the public and private sectors and civil society. This means firms need to listen to trade unions and workers’ collectives, community groups, consumer advocates, and others. Likewise, government assistance to business must be less about subsidies, guarantees, and bailouts, and more about building partnerships. This means attaching strict conditions to any corporate bailouts to ensure that taxpayer money is put to productive use and generates long-term public value, not short-term private profits. In the current crisis, for example, the French government conditioned its bailouts for Renault and Air France-KLM on emission-reduction commitments. France, Belgium, Denmark, and Poland denied state aid to any company domiciled in a European Union-designated tax haven, and barred large recipients from paying dividends or buying back their own shares until 2021. Likewise, US corporations receiving government loans through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act were prohibited from using the funds for share buybacks. These conditions are a start, but are not ambitious enough, either from a climate perspective or in economic terms. The magnitude of government assistance packages does not match firms’ requirements, and the conditions are not always legally binding: for example, the Air France emissions policy applies only to short domestic flights. Far more is needed to achieve a green and sustainable recovery. For example, governments might use the tax code to discourage firms from using certain materials. They might also introduce job guarantees at company or national level so that human capital is not wasted or eroded. This would help the youngest and oldest workers, who have disproportionately suffered job losses owing to the pandemic, and reduce the likely economic shocks in disadvantaged regions already suffering industrial decline. Finance needs fixing, too. During the 2008 global financial crisis, governments flooded markets with liquidity. But, because they did not direct it toward good investment opportunities, much of that funding ended up back in a financial sector unfit for purpose. The current crisis presents an opportunity to harness finance in productive ways to drive long-term growth. Patient long-term finance is key, because a 3-5-year investment cycle doesn’t match the long lifespan of a wind turbine (more than 25 years), or encourage the innovation needed in e-mobility, natural capital development (such as rewilding programs), and green infrastructure. Some governments have already launched sustainable growth initiatives. New Zealand has developed a budget based on “wellbeing” metrics, rather than GDP, to align public spending with broader objectives, while Scotland has established the mission-oriented Scottish National Investment Bank. Along with steering finance toward a green transition, we need to hold the financial sector accountable for its often-destructive environmental impact. The Dutch central bank estimates that Dutch financial institutions’ biodiversity footprint represents a loss of over 58,000 square kilometers (22,394 square miles) of pristine nature – an area 1.4 times larger than the Netherlands. Because markets will not lead a green revolution on their own, government policy must steer them in that direction. This will require an entrepreneurial state that innovates, takes risks, and invests alongside the private sector. Policymakers should therefore redesign procurement contracts in order to move away from low-cost investments by incumbent suppliers, and create mechanisms that “crowd in” innovation from multiple actors to achieve public green goals. Governments should also take a portfolio approach to innovation and investment. In the United Kingdom and the United States, wider industrial policy continues to support the information-technology revolution. Similarly, the EU’s recently launched European Green Deal, Industrial Strategy, and Just Transition Mechanism are acting as the motor and compass for the €750 billion ($888 billion) “Next Generation EU” recovery fund. Finally, we need to reorient our energy system around renewable energy – the antidote to climate change and the key to making our economies energy-secure. We must therefore evict fossil-fuel interests and short-termism from business, finance, and politics. Financially powerful institutions such as banks and universities must divest from fossil-fuel companies. Until they do, a carbon-based economy will prevail. The window for launching a climate revolution – and achieving an inclusive recovery from COVID-19 in the process – is rapidly closing. We need to move quickly if we want to transform the future of work, transit, and energy use, and make the concept of a “green good life” a reality for generations to come. One way or the other, radical change is inevitable; our task is to ensure that we achieve the change we want – while we still have the choice.

CRITICAL COMMENTARY

THE CRITICAL COMMENTARY IS PRESENTED IN TERMS OF RELATED POSTS ON THIS SITE LISTED BELOW.

IN RELATED POST#1 we present the case that the climate movement of our time is best understood as a reincarnation of the environmentalism and the failed anti fossil fuel movement of the 1960s and 1970s and its promotion of renewables in terms of wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal energy. The difference between these two movements is that while the rationale for the first was pollution the rationale in the new movement against fossil fuels had to be re-invented after the EPA, formed as a conseuence of the 1970s movement, had solved all the relevant pollution issues raised by the hippies against fossil fuels. It is thus that a new rationale in the continued movement against fossil fuels had to be invented as catastrophic global warming and climate change that could not only cause a collapse of human civilization but could in fact destroy the planet. The only solution offered to this catastrophe is that we must stop using fossil fuels and overhaul the world’s energy infrastructure to renewables as in wind and solar. The need to continually ratchet up the fear of climate change and the language of fear and to find a danger of continued fossil fuel emissions in all destructive weather and climate events is best understood as a form of last ditch desperation in the final chapter of a failed movement against fossil fuels dating back to the hippie days of the 1960s.

IN RELATED POST#2 We provide the data for a 40-year history of climate fear mongering 1980-2021 with continued escalation of the level of fear of fossil fuel emissions in the form of destructive global warming.

IN RELATED POST#3 We present a literature review of the use of fear as a method for changing and controlling the behavior of the masses. The methodology being used by climate science in this new version of the anti fossil fuel movement is best understood in terms of this “Fear Appeal” methodology and it includes not only the the fear of the climate consequences of continued use of fossil fuel energy but also the villification of the fossil fuel industry in a way to create fear and distrust of the fossil fuel industry among the masses. The Fear Appeal methodology thus establishes that fossil fuels are an evil provided by the devil.

IN RELATED POST#4 We present a history of what is known as Elite Consensus Politics and propose in that context that the case for fossil fueled catastrophic warming in a format of fear that makes it impossible to question the data, the methodology, or the findings is best understood as a form of elite consensus subverting democracy. The people are not allowed to have a voice in the matter since it has been determined to be true by elite scientists and because it has been further determined that any opposition to the climate action demanded can cause human civilization and the planet itself to collapse. The people’s voice and will are thus removed and democracy is subverted. This kind of politics is not new and is described in the literature as the subversion of democracy by elite consensus. The climate change movement is best understood in this context as a political coup by elite consensus that makes it necessary for both the government and the citizens to serve the elite and refrain from critical evaluation against the elite consensus. The elite have thus seized power for all practical purposes because it is not possible for democracy to function under these conditions. It is not possible either for the citizens or their for democratic institututions to oppose the elite such that the will of the people is removed, and elected governments must do what climate activists tell them to do.

IN RELATED POST#5 is demonstrated a dramatic example of how elite consensus politics uses fear appeal. In this example we find that the enormous control ceded to authorities by democratic socities in the Covid19 crisis has motivated the World Economic Forum to propose a global political structure in which the elite can seize total global control over the masses in what is described as The Great Reset. Essentially, what the WEF is saying is that {What we learned from he Covid is that there are circumstances where people will just give up their freedom and will do exactly what we tell them to do and this is what we need to build back better as we elites see it here at the WEF.

RELATED POST#6: Here we find that economists at the Grantham Institute have proposed that what we learned from climate change is that our economic and financial systems have been all done wrong because they do not contain environmentalism constrainsts and that the horror of climate change is the result of economics and finance done wrong.

CONCLUSION: THE CLIMATE LOCKDOWN THESIS PROPOSED IN THIS POST IS DERIVED FROM THE “GREAT RESET” HYPOTHESIS AND IT PROPOSES THAT SINCE THE PANDEMIC CREATED THE CONDITIONS FOR A GREAT RESET, THE CLIMATE CHANGE MOVEMENT SHOULD LEARN FROM THAT AND CREATE THE GLOBAL CONTROL INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF CLIMATE CHANGE. THE THEORY BEHIND THE GREAT RESET AND CLIMATE LOCKDOWN CONSTRUCTIONS LIES IN THE THEORIES OF FEAR APPEAL AND ELITE CONSENSUS POLITICS AND OPENS UP THE POSSIBILITY OF THE SUBVERSION OF DEMOCRACY AND A GREAT RESET GLOBAL RULE OF THE ELITE CONSENSUS ON THE BASIS THAT THEY AND ONLY THEY CAN SAVE US FROM GLOBAL CATASTROPHES.

IN THE NEW WOKE STRUCTURE OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION, CAPITALISM IS BAD, KEYNSIAN ECONOMICS IS BAD, AND DEMoCRACY IS BAD, AND PERHAPS EVEN THE IDEA OF NATION STATES IS BAD BECAUSE THESE ARE THE FLAWS IN HUMAN CIVILIZATION THAT GIVE US THINGS LIKE CLIMATE CHANGE. WHAT WE LEARNED FROM THE CLIMATE CHANGE issue IS THAT WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS IS ABSOLUTE GLOBAL DICTATORSHIP SO THAT WE CAN DO THINGS RIGHT AND PREVENT FUTURE CATASTROPHES LIKE THE CLIMATE CRISIS.

RELATED POST#1: A HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/03/23/anti-fossil-fuel-activism-disguised-as-climate-science/

RELATED POST#2: A HISTORY OF FEAR BASED ACTIVISM AGAINST FOSSIL FUELS: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/04/13/the-science-of-climate-science-is-fear/

RELATED POST#3: FEAR APPEAL STRATEGY IN CLIMATE SCIENCE: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/29/fear-appeal-bibiography/

RELATED POST#4: ELITE CONSENSUS POLITICS: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/03/07/how-the-elite-subvert-democracy/

RELATED POST #5: THE GREAT RESET: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/12/09/the-great-reset/

RELATED POST#6: CLIMATE CHANGE AND ECONOMICS: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/16/grantham-institute-climate-change/

MORE CLIMATE LOCKDOWN ARTICLES

MARKET-WATCH: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/we-need-to-act-boldly-now-if-we-are-to-avoid-economy-wide-lockdowns-to-halt-climate-change-11600879250

The world is approaching a tipping point on climate change, when protecting the future of civilization will require dramatic interventions. Avoiding this scenario will require a green economic transformation—and thus a radical overhaul of corporate governance, finance, policy, and energy systems. Under a “climate lockdown,” governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling. To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently. COVID-19 is itself a consequence of environmental degradation. It is the disease of the Anthropocene.” Moreover, climate change will exacerbate the social and economic problems highlighted by the pandemic. These include governments’ diminishing capacity to address public-health crises, the private sector’s limited ability to withstand sustained economic disruption, and pervasive social inequality. These shortcomings reflect the distorted values underlying our priorities. The climate crisis is also a public-health crisis. Global warming will cause drinking water to degrade and enable pollution-linked respiratory diseases to thrive. 3.5 billion people globally will live in unbearable heat by 2070. Addressing this triple crisis requires reorienting corporate governance, finance, policy, and energy systems toward a green economic transformation. To achieve this, three obstacles must be removed: business that is shareholder-driven instead of stakeholder-driven, finance that is used in inadequate and inappropriate ways, and government that is based on outdated economic thinking and faulty assumptions. Corporate governance must now reflect stakeholders’ needs instead of shareholders’ whims. Building an inclusive, sustainable economy depends on productive cooperation among the public and private sectors and civil society. This means firms need to listen to trade unions and workers’ collectives, community groups, consumer advocates, and others.Likewise, government assistance to business must be less about subsidies, guarantees, and bailouts, and more about building partnerships. This means attaching strict conditions to any corporate bailouts to ensure that taxpayer money is put to productive use and generates long-term public value, not short-term private profits. In the current crisis the French government conditioned its bailouts for Renault and Air France-KLM AF, 0.89% on emission-reduction commitments. France, Belgium, Denmark, and Poland denied state aid to any company domiciled in a European Union-designated tax haven, and barred large recipients from paying dividends or buying back their own shares until 2021. U.S. corporations receiving government loans through the CARES Act were prohibited from using the funds for share buybacks. These conditions are a start. Far more is needed to achieve a green and sustainable recovery. For example, governments might use the tax code to discourage firms from using certain materials. They might also introduce job guarantees at company or national level so that human capital is not wasted or eroded. This would help the youngest and oldest workers, who have disproportionately suffered job losses owing to the pandemic, and reduce the likely economic shocks in disadvantaged regions already suffering industrial decline. Finance needs fixing. During the 2008 global financial crisis, governments flooded markets with liquidity. But, because they did not direct it toward good investment opportunities, much of that funding ended up back in a financial sector unfit for the purpose. The current crisis presents an opportunity to harness finance in productive ways to drive long-term growth. Patient long-term finance is key, because a three- to five-year investment cycle doesn’t match the long lifespan of a wind turbine (more than 25 years), or encourage the innovation needed in e-mobility, natural capital development (such as rewilding programs), and green infrastructure. Some governments have launched sustainable growth initiatives. New Zealand has developed a budget based on “well-being” metrics, rather than GDP, to align public spending with broader objectives, while Scotland has established the mission-oriented Scottish National Investment Bank. We must steer finance toward a green transition & hold the financial sector accountable for environmental impact. Markets will not lead a green revolution on their own. Government policy must steer them. This will require an entrepreneurial state that innovates, takes risks, and invests alongside the private sector. Policy makers should therefore redesign procurement contracts in order to move away from low-cost investments by incumbent suppliers, and create mechanisms that “crowd in” innovation from multiple actors to achieve public green goals. We need to reorient our energy system around renewable energy. This is the antidote to climate change and the key to making our economies energy-secure. We must evict fossil-fuel interests and short-termism from business, finance, and politics. Banks and Universities must divest from fossil-fuel companies. The window is rapidly closing. We need to move quickly if we want to transform the future of work, transit, and energy use, and make the concept of a “green good life” a reality for generations to come. Radical change is inevitable; We must achieve the change we want while we still have the chance.

FORBES/GUARDIAN: MARCH 2021: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/03/03/report-world-needs-equivalent-of-pandemic-lockdown-every-two-years-to-meet-paris-carbon-emission-goals/?sh=4e3dd3306dee

The dramatic drop in global carbon emissions seen during the early days of the pandemic and global shutdowns would need to be matched every two years for the rest of the decade in order to meet the goals outlined in the Paris climate agreement. The report found that carbon emissions fell by about 2.6 billion metric tons in 2020, a 7% drop from the previous year, a historic decrease unmatched by climate action or the expansion of renewablle energy. Further drops of1 to 2 gigatonnes per year are needed for global emissions to meet the safe worldwide temperature range to dodge the effects of climate change, the equivalent of a coronavirus-pandemic lockdown once every two years. The course of global emissions could be redirected if world governments invest in green energy and divest from fossil fuels. We have failed to understand in the past that we can’t have tackling climate change as a side issue. It can’t be about one law or policy, it has to be put at the heart of all policy. Every strategy and every plan from every government must be consistent with tackling climate change. Earth temperatures should stay within 1.5C of preindustrial levels to prevent climate catastrophes. The emissions drop from coronavirus lockdowns last year will have virtually no long-term effect on the fight against the imminent climate crisis. The Paris Agreement will give us less than a 1% decline in global carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. The report is “a red alert for our planet. Nation states are nowhere close to the level of ambition” required to meet the agreement’s goals. Global carbon dioxide emissions have already rebounded to prepandemic levels.

BBC: MARCH 2021: Piers Forster : The world’s sudden launch into lockdown a year ago had an interesting effect on carbon emissions – now they’re returning back to normal far quicker than society is. The planet had already warmed by around 1.2C since pre-industrial when the pandemic began an unprecedented drop in human activity, as we went into lockdown. Factories stopped, cars kept their engines off, and planes were grounded. This gave climate science some new and unexpected insights. Here are three things we have learned: Climate science can operate in real time. The pandemic made us think on our feet about how to get around some of the difficulties of monitoring greenhouse gas emissions, and carbon dioxide in particular, in real time. When many lockdowns were beginning in March 2020, the next comprehensive Global Carbon Budget setting out the year’s emissions trends was not due until the end of the year. So climate scientists set about looking for other data that might indicate how CO2 was changing. We used information on lockdown as a mirror for global emissions. In other words, if we knew what the emissions were from various economic sectors or countries pre-pandemic, and we knew by how much activity had fallen, we could assume that their emissions had fallen by the same amount. While emissions may have dropped because airlines halted flights, the lack of air traffic may have actually caused a slight warming in temperatures. While emissions may have dropped because airlines halted flights, the lack of air traffic may have actually caused a slight warming in temperatures because of lost aerosols. By May 2020, a study combined government lockdown policies and activity data from around the world to predict as much as a 7% fall in CO2 emissions by the end of the year, a figure later confirmed by the Global Carbon Project. This was soon followed by research which used Google and Apple mobility data to reflect changes in 10 different pollutants. A third study tracked CO2 emissions using data on fossil fuel combustion and cement production.

The latest Google mobility data shows that although daily activity hasn’t yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, it has recovered to some extent. The emissions estimate, shows, a limited bounce back in emissions after the first lockdown and steady growth in global emissions in the second half of 2020. This was followed by a second and smaller dip representing the second wave in late 2020/early 2021. As the pandemic progressed, the Carbon Monitor project tracked emissions in real time. No dramatic effect on climate change was found. The pandemic will have less effect on efforts to tackle climate change than we had hoped.

Looking ahead to 2030, climate models estimate that global temperatures will be around 0.01C lower as a result of Covid-19. Lockdown actually had a slight warming effect because falling pollution lowered stratospheriic aerosols The impact on global temperatures was short-lived and very small (plus 0.03C), but it was still bigger than anything caused by lockdown-related changes in ozone, CO2 or aviation. Climate models estimate that global temperatures will only be around 0.01C lower as a result of Covid-19 than if countries followed the emissions pledges they already had in place at the height of the pandemic. The national pledges have been updated and strengthened but they aren’t enough to avoid dangerous climate change, and as long as emissions continue we will be eating into the remaining carbon budget. The longer we delay action, the steeper the emissions cuts will need to be. The temporary halt to normal life we have now seen with successive lockdowns is not only not enough to stop climate change, it is also not sustainable: We need to find ways to reduce emissions without the economic and social impacts of lockdowns, and find solutions that also promote health, welfare and equity. Widespread climate ambition and action by individuals, institutions and businesses is still vital, but it must be underpinned and supported by structural economic change. Strong climate action must be integrated into future investments. Investing just 1.2% of global GDP in economic recovery packages could have significant climate action implications, but green investment is not being made at the level needed. Strong climate action must be integrated into future investments. The stakes are high but the potential rewards are higher. (Piers Forster).

THE FEAR APPEAL OF THE MEDIA CONTINUES AND GROWS MORE FEARSOME BY THE DAY