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Last year the Straße des 17. Juni in Berlin was partly completely empty
Photo: Christian Mang / imago images
When researchers presented a carbon footprint for 2020 at the end of last year, it basically sounded like good news.
As a result of the corona pandemic, the scientists recorded a record drop in global CO₂ emissions.
The values have decreased by seven percent, it said.
The corona-related lockdown, in which, for example, large parts of air traffic came to a standstill and people traveled less, also had its good sides.
But in the long term, these savings in carbon dioxide pollution will probably not play a major role.
Climate researcher Hans von Storch drew attention to this on Monday at the start of the 12th German Climate Conference in Hamburg.
According to von Storch, the economic reduction would not amount to more than eight percent with a generous design.
"That's equivalent to a month less emissions," he said.
That is not very much given 40 gigatons of CO₂ emissions a year.
The founder of the conference and former head of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht emphasized that if the Paris climate protection targets are to be met, then these 40 gigatons would have to drop completely by 2050.
"That would mean here that we will continue the lockdown indefinitely and install another measure with a similar effect every year."
In December, scientists from the Global Carbon Project research network calculated that the decline in climate-damaging CO₂ emissions would be higher in 2020 than in previous record years.
It was estimated at 2.4 billion tons.
At the end of the Second World War, CO₂ emissions fell by just 0.9 billion tonnes and at the height of the financial crisis in 2009 by only half a billion tonnes.
The reasons saw the climate research network in the shutdown of the global economy as a result of the pandemic.
However, the researchers warned at the time that mankind would still have used up a large part of the emissions budget in 2020 that would still be needed to meet the Paris climate targets.
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joe / dpa