Opportunities to Address Climate Change Arise From Covid 19 Recovery

The Paris Agreement, which almost all countries adopted on the 12th of December 2015, aims to regulate the rise of the world’s average temperature to at least below 2 degrees celsius and, in the best case, 1.5 degrees celsius. However, the Climate Action Tracker projects that the Nationally Determined Contributions’ reports can only regulate the global temperature to only 2.6 degrees celsius at best. The consequences of this are potentially catastrophic.

With the economic fallouts of the global pandemic, Covid 19, concerns arise that efforts, attention, and resources of the world will be focused on the pandemic and diverted away from climate change issues. However, albeit these crises are different, the solution to both of them is not necessarily exclusive. On the contrary, raising the efforts for addressing climate issues is a smart move that targets both crises. If governments were to increase financial aid in energy transition within the recovery packages of Covid 19, jobs are created, which helps in the rise of the economy. Another reason is that renewable energy has been proven to be more resilient to the negative effects of Covid 19 on the economy.