Over the past year it has looked like the coronavirus pandemic would scuttle global climate efforts, particularly as governments and central banks bailed out fossil fuel companies to protect jobs in the face of surging unemployment. “In March there was a gloomy sense that climate would take a back seat,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “But the reality is there’s been a growing recognition that we don’t have the luxury of choosing one crisis at a time.”
Global leaders have since then stepped up their climate ambitions. European Union ministers last month backed a binding 2050 climate neutrality goal. And in the past two months, China, Japan and South Korea have all committed to achieving carbon neutral economies. Now the U.S. has elected a progressive leader who’s made similar vows.
Cleetus said a key driver has been the relentless wave of extreme weather events triggering disasters around the globe: a heat wave in Siberia, floods in Vietnam and China, massive fires in Australia and the U.S. West, and a record-breaking year for Atlantic hurricanes. Even in the middle of the U.S. election drama, Hurricane Eta roared toward central America and the Philippines recovered from super-typhoon Goni, which killed more than a dozen people.
One way for Biden to help reinvigorate the global fight against climate change would be to seek to set up a global net-zero coalition with Europe, said Simone Tagliapietra, a research fellow at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel. It could promote policy tools that need strong international cooperation, such as the development of carbon emissions removal technologies and a levy on imports of emissions-intensive products already being considered by the EU.
“I think 2020 can still go down in history as the year where more than half of global emitters got really serious about reducing emissions to zero,” said Niklas Hoehne, founding partner of the NewClimate Institute.
—With assistance from Hayley Warren, Jennifer A Dlouhy and Ewa Krukowska.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.