JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Over the past two months as the COVID-19 pandemic has our lives’ upended, greenhouse gas emissions across major cities and metropolitan areas in the United States have dropped significantly. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, carbon dioxide emissions will fall nearly 7.5% in 2020.
“In the long term, obviously this way of reducing air pollution is not sustainable, but neither was the way we were handling air pollution prior to all this,” said Jenna Stevens, State Director for Environment Florida, where she’s seen pollution levels across the state the lowest they’ve been in decades.
In fact, when the Florida Department of Environmental Protection released its annual numbers a few months back – Florida met all of it’s federal benchmarks and has it’s cleanest air on record, being the most populous state to meet federal standards. It shows the state is on the right track.
Now over the past few months, the big drop in emissions simply has to do with less cars on the road. According to the EPA, transportation is the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, at nearly 30%. So with all of us stuck at home, not burning gasoline on that commute to work, the atmosphere is grateful.
“This isn’t something where we can reduce emissions for two months and everything be fixed,” added Stevens. “This is going to take long term changes and changes in the way our society views how we produce and consume energy.”
But here’s the rub, even though emissions have fallen, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is still prominent. Think of it like this – we’ve slowed down how fast we’re pouring our cup of coffee, but there’s still coffee in the cup. To make any sort of dent in our warming globe, CO2 emissions would have to be this low, if not lower, consistently for the foreseeable future.