Rapid CO2 Emissions Drop From COVID A Blip; "The Longer-Term Trend Just Continued"
On Sept. 20, the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research, or EDGAR, a scientific group associated with the European Commission, released its 2022 report detailing the CO2 emissions of every country in the world between 1970 and 2021.
It found that global CO2 emissions in 2020 — the year distinguished by COVID-19 lockdowns — fell 5.3% below 2019 levels. But in 2021, global CO2 emissions “bounced back almost to the level of 2019,” with countries releasing 37.9 billion metric tons, or gigatonnes (Gt), of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — only about 0.36% lower than what was released in 2019.
EDIT
William Lamb, a researcher at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, who worked on previous EDGAR reports on global emissions, said that 2020 temporarily disrupted global CO2 emissions, but that it didn’t have “lasting consequences” for overall emission trends.
“Everybody went down for the year of 2020, but then the longer-term trend just continued,” Lamb told Mongabay. “So the emissions of China kept on going up after COVID. In India, they kept on going up. Whereas in the United States and Europe, they kept on going down. The story is more or less the same as it was before.” While Lamb said the EDGAR report provides a “comprehensive” view of global CO2 emissions, he noted that it doesn’t account for other greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane and nitrous oxide.
EDIT
https://news.mongabay.com/2022/09/pandemic-dip-was-just-a-blip-as-global-emissions-rebound-report-shows/
