“All told, the measures to contain coronavirus have resulted in reductions of 15% to 40% in output across key industrial sectors. This is likely to have wiped out a quarter or more of the country’s CO2 emissions over the past two weeks, the period when activity would normally have resumed after the Chinese new-year holiday”.

Lauri’s article is an excellent fact-filled analysis—read it in full here.

But how much is “a quarter” of China’s CO2 emissions?

“Over the same period in 2019, China released around 400m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2), meaning the virus could have cut global emissions by 100MtCO2 to date.

So that’s 100 million tonnes, or 100 billion kg of CO2, in a two-week period.

100 000 000 000 kg.

It’s a lot. That’s around 200 kg less per square km of the planet.

If only the Australian bushfires hadn’t released 900 million tonnes of CO2, the planet would be having a good year.

China would therefore need (900/100 x 2) = 18 weeks like this to balance out the extra Australian CO2.

Based on how things are going, this is possible. And coronavirus is now hitting parts of Europe (Italy) and other parts of Asia (South Korea), so this should also lower CO2 emissions in a more planetary way.

Another crazy fact out of China: on average more than 3000 domestic flights cancelled per day between 23 January and 18 February! That’s a lot of planes not flying. Plus all the cancelled flights to and from China.

Lauri estimates that total aviation emissions have dropped by 11% over the past two weeks:

Airlines all around the world are currently freaking out because their profits will be smaller than expected.

So sad.

In any case, China will be looking to ramp up industry once the scare has blown over, with the risk of cancelling out all these “saved” CO2 emissions.

Because using the coronavirus scare as a planetary wake-up call would be too much to ask for.

I mean, Jonny still needs those plastic toys, right? And Mummy and Daddy’s new 2020 iPhones are already a primal urge waiting to be satisfied, deep in their souls.

I think it’s group hug in a forest time.

Bye for now.

[Cover photo credit: Kham/Reuters]