New Delhi, April 3: In what comes as a surprise in all this chaos is the nature’s response to the deadly Covid 19 outbreak. If not better, the vegetation growth and animals roaming freely on the streets of eminent cities depict scenes of apocalypse movies. But amid such scenes are the skies which can’t get blue than ever as the levels of toxic air pollutants have dropped because cities across the world are in lockdown to contain the spread of Covid 19 virus.

Emissions of greenhouse gases are, too, following a similar pattern. It is predicted that carbon dioxide emissions may witness the biggest fall since World War Two in 2020 as the coronavirus outbreak brings economies to a virtual standstill, according to a Reuters report.

What drop in the CO2 level is expected?

Rob Jackson, who chairs the Global Carbon Project, which produces widely-watched annual emissions estimates, said carbon output could fall by more than 5 per cent year-on-year — the first dip since a 1.4 per cent reduction after the 2008 financial crisis.

As reported by Reuters, last month, Glen Peters, research director of the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, predicted carbon emissions would fall between 0.3 per cent and 1.2 per cent this year, using higher and lower forecasts for global GDP growth from the OECD.

Breakthrough Institute, a research centre in California also expected emissions will decline 0.5-2.2 per cent, basing its calculations on growth forecasts from JP Morgan, and assuming the global economy recovers in the second half.

What has caused the reduction in CO2 levels?

The reason for the dip in the emissions is not solely lockdown but the cut in travel. According to Kimberly Nicholas, a sustainability science researcher at Lund University in Sweden,  these emissions have been impacted in the short term in places where public health measures, for instance, restricting people to their homes, have cut unnecessary travel. He says transport, makes up 23 per cent of global carbon emission. Driving and aviation are key contributors to emissions from transport, each contributing 72 per cent and 11 per cent of the transport’s sector’s greenhouse emissions.

While combined emissions from manufacturing, industrial processes and construction comprises  18.4 per cent of global anthropogenic emissions. The financial crash of 2008-09 led to an overall dip in emissions of 1.3 per cent. However, this quickly turned back by 2010 as the economy recovered.

Were emissions ever impacted before?

The change in the atmosphere and fall in the levels of CO2 emissions because of any pandemic is perhaps not first time in history. History has witnessed the spread of disease linked to lower emissions – even well before the industrial age.

Even earlier there has been such a fall in emission levels due to high death rates from disease and, in the case of the conquest of the Americas, from genocide. In those times, as well deaths meant large tracts of cultivated land being abandoned, more wild and shriking of CO2 levels. However, today’s scenario is more akin to those of recent world events, such as the financial crash of 2008 and 2009. “Then, global emissions dropped immensely for a year,” says expert Julia Pongratz from Germany.

Will it have a long term impact?

However, experts have raised concerns that the cut in emissions in this period of Covid 19 outbreak could be short-lived and have little impact on the concentrations of carbon dioxide that have accumulated in the atmosphere over decades if long-term structural changes are not taken. After world greenhouse gas emissions dipped in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, they shot back up a whopping 5.1% in the recovery, according to Jackson.

It has already started to resume its earlier pattern in China, where emissions fell by an estimated 25 per cent as the country closed factories and put in place strict measures on people’s movement to contain the coronavirus earlier this year, but have since returned to a normal range.

At least, for now, there is a hope that the world can come together to take rapid action on climate change if the threat it poses was treated as urgently as Covid 19.