How Did COVID-19 Affect Climate Change?

Written By Teacher: Bridget Kutil

Resource Specialist

This article, written in September 2020, predicts the impacts of the pandemic and subsequent economic decline on climate goals. Many students will have valuable background experiences and memories of the shutdown that can help them understand and find meaning in this article. However, reading this article may be emotional for students who have lost friends or family to the COVID-19 pandemic or for students whose families were struck by the shutdown, so it is important not to pressure students to share their experiences. After reading this article, economics students may benefit from the course Climate Economics to make additional connections between the economy and climate change. Students in social studies classes can research and discuss the connection between COVID-19, particle pollution, and environmental justice. The article, Maps Show How Air Pollution and COVID-19 Can Be a Deadly Mix, can help students understand these connections.

Written By: MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative

The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program, a part of MIT Climate HQ, provides the public with nonpartisan, easy-to-understand, and scientifically-grounded information on climate change and its solutions.

The Covid-19 pandemic has completely upturned daily life for millions of Americans: confining us to our homes, keeping our children out of school, changing the ways we work and socialize, and making travel much harder. It’s no surprise these changes have also affected the climate. Roads, skies, and factories have all emptied, lowering the United States’ daily CO2 emissions by 15%, the steepest fall in recorded history. But right now, say Professors Christopher Knittel and Jing Li of the MIT Sloan School of Management, we’re setting ourselves up for an economic recovery that not only bounces our emissions right back to where they started, but may even leave them higher in the long run. “The longer the economy is shut down,” they say, “the worse impacts we’ll see.”

The economic shutdown has led to a halt in most investments in low-carbon technologies, including electric vehicles and renewable energy. “Global electric vehicle sales are projected to decline by 43% in 2020 due to the plummeting auto sales overall combined with low gasoline prices,” wrote Knittel and Li in a recently-published study. Rooftop solar panels have also seen sharp declines in sales, and even big companies building solar and wind farms have shed large numbers of jobs.

As we lose these private investments, the government’s economic policies will have a huge hand in deciding whether this pandemic stalls our progress in building a cleaner energy system.