gatesnotes | A global crisis has shocked the world. It is causing a tragic number
of deaths, making people afraid to leave home, and leading to economic
hardship not seen in many generations. Its effects are rippling across
the world.
Obviously, I am talking about COVID-19. But in just a few decades,
the same description will fit another global crisis: climate change. As
awful as this pandemic is, climate change could be worse.
I realize that it’s hard to think about a problem like climate change
right now. When disaster strikes, it is human nature to worry only
about meeting our most immediate needs, especially when the disaster is
as bad as COVID-19. But the fact that dramatically higher temperatures
seem far off in the future does not make them any less of a problem—and
the only way to avoid the worst possible climate outcomes is to
accelerate our efforts now. Even as the world works to stop the novel
coronavirus and begin recovering from it, we also need to act now to
avoid a climate disaster by building and deploying innovations that will
let us eliminate our greenhouse gas emissions.
You may have seen projections that, because economic activity has
slowed down so much, the world will emit fewer greenhouse gases this
year than last year. Although these projections are certainly true,
their importance for the fight against climate change has been
overstated.
Analysts disagree about how much emissions will go down this year, but the International Energy Agency puts the reduction around 8 percent. In real terms, that means we will release the equivalent of around 47 billion tons of carbon, instead of 51 billion.
That’s a meaningful reduction, and we would be in great shape if we
could continue that rate of decrease every year. Unfortunately, we
can’t.
Consider what it’s taking to achieve this 8 percent reduction. More
than 600,000 people have died, and tens of millions are out of work.
This April, car traffic was half what it was in April 2019. For months,
air traffic virtually came to a halt.
