Economic Recovery and Climate Change
Speaker 1: 00:00 Carbon emissions plummeted during the COVID-19 lockdown. But as the economy reopens, carbon emissions are bound to increase. Again, the question is how rapidly an article by UC SD researchers published in the journal nature suggests that in the long run, how we use stimulus money to restart the economy will have a much bigger impact on future climate change than the temporary respite created by the pandemic. KPBS is Alison st. John's spoke with Ryan Hannah lead author of the nature piece and an assistant research scientist at UC San Diego. Here's that interview. Speaker 2: 00:37 So now your article, uh, says that carbon emissions worldwide have dropped by a greater percentage in the last year than in any year since world war two, would we have to maintain that reduction? You know, that trajectory permanently in order to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord? Yes, absolutely. What Paris requires us to do in short is produce the same level of emissions reductions that this economic crisis has delivered. And we need to do that steadily for the next 10 years, at least to keep us on track. So we absolutely need to build on this. So we'd have to reduce the same amount we just reduced every year for the next 10 years in order to meet those goals. I think we've all been hoping that the pandemic shutdown would have a positive impact on carbon emissions by radically reducing them. But why is it that you believe how we recover from this crisis is actually more important than the months that we've spent in lockdown. Speaker 2: 01:35 This has all to do with the fundamental physics and chemistry of, of the climate system and the way that CO2 actually contributes to warming of the planet, because CO2 lingers in the atmosphere for decades up to 800 years, it's the emissions over a succession of years or what we would call the cumulative emissions that actually matters for warming. It's not the individual emissions during any one year per se. And because of that basic inescapable fact, what matters most for climate is what we do over a succession of years. That means it's the decisions we make to set us on higher, low emission trajectories during the recovery. That actually matter more than a single year of shocked emissions. What are the alternative scenarios that you see ahead depending on how the stimulus money is spent? Yeah, well, what we did was, was looked to history and trying to understand what we might do moving forward. Speaker 2: 02:32 So, and in this paper, we looked at all of the historical shocks that have occurred since the seventies to understand how emissions fell and then how they recovered once governments took action. What history tells us is they're very dirty trajectories in which emissions actually reinflate, and we emit more than we did going into the shock. Um, there's also stories of, of greening as we saw after the 2008, 2009 financial crisis in which, um, government actions actually led to, to a greening of the economies and lower emissions over very longterm trajectory. So there is a range of possibilities, um, that that history gives us, um, what those tell us in relation to the Paris agreements, however, is that we actually need to create a new history of permissions moving forward. We need to, in essence, rewrites history, by greening beyond anything that is in the historical record, Speaker 3: 03:34 is there anything to suggest that this crisis will follow a dirtier or a greener recovery? What we've seen so far has been mixed. If anything, it's Speaker 2: 03:44 taking a dirtier trajectory we've seen, for example, the United States rollback fuel efficiency standards for autos, and that's important because those cars will contribute to emissions over the coming decade. The same is true in other industries and other countries, China, for example, is, is continuing to prop up it's it's coal base. And again, those coal power plants will produce emissions for decades into the future. The beacon of light and all of this has been the European union they had in place a European green deal, which was a big green industrial initiative too. Put the entire European union block on a trajectory to zero emissions by 2050. Hmm. Overall, however, the key, the key metric, the key marker to keep in mind is how much, what percentage of the stimulus globally is going to what we might call green investments after the Oh eight Oh nine, walked down to the amount of green stimulus in the overall stimulus was about 15%. What we've seen so far today, the green portion of the stimulus has been less than 1%, Speaker 3: 04:51 less than 1%. So as we come out of this crisis or approved through this crisis created by the pandemic, the focus is on getting people back to work and rebuilding the economy. So what do you suggest is the best way for those fighting to keep global warming at Bay, to convince decision makers of ways to meet those priorities and still limit emissions? Speaker 2: 05:14 The broad takeaway, firstly, is that there are lots of routes to economic recovery. Some of those reduce emissions, some of them are neutral. Some of them increase emissions. What we recommend doing is filtering the numerous policy initiatives that might be put in place by the amount of emissions they would reduce. And to compare that with the jobs and growth that those policies would deliver in the short term policies that would deliver the most benefits to the economy, as well as to climate change, Speaker 3: 05:46 like the most bang for the buck. So have you got any specific suggestions of how to prioritize those efforts, Speaker 2: 05:54 industries that are part of the low carbon transition that are delivering lots of emissions reductions and lots of jobs? Prime examples are renewable energies. That means solar and wind energy efficiency is another huge employer I'm installing new and better thermal in insulation and controls in buildings, both commercial and residential individual homes. Those are both huge employers and they're ready to absorb lots of stimulus monies quickly. They've also been extremely hard hit by this economic shutdown. There are other industries and new technologies that we will certainly need as part of are larger longterm plans to decarbonize the economy. Some of these industries like carbon capture hydrogen production, they're not ready to scale, but we know we'll need them in the future. And so these types of industries, the less mature ones are ripe for more fundamental research and development R and D dollars going into bye basic science. We absolutely shouldn't leave those behind, Speaker 3: 06:57 but you're saying that you think now is not the time to be focusing more on new and innovative ways to tackle climate change, but rather to focus on things that are sort of shovel-ready, shovel-ready precisely the federal government is pouring stimulus money down the pipeline right now, how much of an impact on carbon emissions can local government make here? For example, in the city of San Diego with this stimulus money, Speaker 2: 07:21 cities have actually quite a large role to play to their credit. They've been leading for the last three or four years on, on climate. As we've seen this sort of stepping back from responsibility at the federal level, cities have done a lot to encourage renewables at home. For example, home solar, they've been leading on public transit and increasing mobility and options for mobility, and they certainly have a role to play and how we design and live in our cities in the future. That means increasing density or improving access to public transit. It means, again, building retrofit programs, these are all areas where cities have have a role to play. [inaudible] a key point with these infrastructures is that because they are so long lived, the decisions that we take in our cities now will last. And so decisions today by by cities are, are important. Now that being said, ultimately, um, addressing climate change, um, we can't beat around the Bush is going to require really fundamental, transformative change across all areas of our economy. And so those types of decisions that, you know, state national transnational governments and decisions that would ultimately be made are going to have to come from those governments of that. Okay. The, Speaker 3: 08:45 the highest level, what does all your research suggest is the best path for people who are focused on bringing about a change that that will save us from the worst impacts of global. We Speaker 2: 08:56 shouldn't discredit the impact of individuals. There is a huge role for, for customer behavior, for consumer behavior. This stems broadly from a general awareness about the carbon and environmental impacts that our choices have. So that means driving and travel habits. It means choices about the foods that we eat and where we purchase those foods from whether it's local or being shipped in internationally. I think if, if there is one silver lining to these lockdowns and, and to the pendulum, it gets that it shows us that we are capable of behavioral change and it's on it's on us, partly as individuals to recognize that and to align that with, with climate action. We've been speaking with Renae Hannah, who is assistant research scientist at UC San Diego and the lead author of a piece published in the journal nature. Ryan, thank you very much. Thanks so much, Alison.
