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Extinction Rebellion activists stage a march from Parliament Square to the Brazilian Embassy in London, September 5, 2020, to protest destruction of the Amazon rain forest.
When the coronavirus lockdowns shut down the economy and significantly limited greenhouse gas emissions for a short period of time, there was an opportunity to build on that to advance the international goal to limit global warming. However, countries that are among the biggest emitters have moved in the opposite direction. Some countries are supporting polluting industries in their economic recovery packages, and others are failing to focus on climate at all, according to a new report from the Climate Action Tracker (CAT).
CAT found that COVID relief packages in the United States, the European Union, India, South Korea, and China provided large liquidity support and bailouts for corporations, without any requirements for more sustainable operations or other green criteria. The report evaluated 106 measures within each of the governments’ respective packages, and found that a significant portion of relief plans were either neutral or unclear when it comes to climate, with a focus on short-term outcomes.
The report found that all four countries and the EU included “green initiatives,” but they made up a comparatively small investment in terms of GDP. For example, the United States spent the equivalent of about 14 percent of its 2019 GDP on coronavirus relief, mostly through the CARES Act, but only about 0.5 percent of this plan was categorized as “green” by CAT.
The European Union and South Korea had the best recovery plans when it comes to considering the realities of the climate crisis. The plans, respectively, have dedicated financing for green technologies and research and development as well as implementing regulatory changes, which will translate to structural impacts that last beyond the pandemic. The report named the EU as a global climate leader.
The only “green” rated policy in the United States was its extension for solar investment and wind production tax credits.
CAT also compared recovery plans for how industry-specific policy considered climate. For example, funding for Air France and Austrian Airlines as part of aid packages for airlines were tied to climate conditions. In the U.S., China, and South Korea, airlines were given funding without conditions. Germany and South Korea were the only two countries to use the coronavirus relief to dedicate money to building renovations, by retrofitting them to be more sustainable.
The only “green” rated policy in the United States was its extension for solar investment and wind production tax credits. However, when it comes to the energy industry, the U.S. also waived reporting requirements on fossil fuel electricity generators, which contribute to tracking air pollution, acid rain, and nitric oxide. The Federal Reserve also modified its Main Street Lending Program specifically to accommodate the oil and gas industries.
The report argues that the failure to address climate change directly through these economic packages continues to make nations dependent on their current high-emitting operations and makes transition to renewable technologies even harder.
Thirteen countries were also re-evaluated by CAT’s ranking system, a scale that compares a country’s actual climate policies against the Paris climate accord’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100.
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“Unfortunately, what we’re seeing more of is governments using the pandemic recovery to roll back climate legislation and bail out the fossil fuel industry, especially in the U.S., but also in Brazil, Mexico, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, Russia and Saudi Arabia, and other countries,” Niklas Höhne, of NewClimate Institute and a report co-author, said in a press release.
Brazil has accelerated environmental rollbacks even after last year’s massive wildfires. President Jair Bolsonaro, specifically, has encouraged more deforestation by rolling back forest protections. Mexico’s government has passed several laws that limit the role of renewable-energy development in the country, which will make it more reliant on fossil fuels. Prior to the pandemic, in South Africa, there was a plan to transition away from coal energy, but the country’s coronavirus relief gave more money to the fossil fuel industry than to its clean-energy sector.
While the national lockdowns around the world and consequent economic slowdowns did contribute to lower emissions levels this year compared to 2019, Höhne said it’s unclear whether this will contribute to any long-term decline in global warming. This is because the emissions level drop was caused by a random public-health event, rather than structural changes to the economy or decarbonization. And it seems structural changes are unlikely to be implemented, based on the analysis of COVID recovery packages.
The world has currently warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but the temperature is projected to rise to about 2.9 degrees by the end of the century with current policy measures in countries around the world. Even if every country adapted their official laws and policies to their Paris Agreement commitments, they would only improve outcomes by 0.02 degrees on average.
“2020 is the year governments agreed to increase their Paris Agreement pledges, yet few have done so, and our latest projections of warming show this is an urgent issue. At the current 1.1°C of warming, we are already seeing devastating impacts in some regions, such as the fires on the U.S. west coast, and flooding in Africa’s Sahel region,” said Deborah Ramalope, head of climate policy analysis at Climate Analytics.
“The economic downturn due to the pandemic alone may lead to 2030 emissions being slightly lower, but this is only a delay and is highly unlikely to have any impact on long-term warming,” she added, in the press release. “What really counts is how the recovery is shaped.”
