It is common knowledge that the climate crisis is going to continue to worsen unless something is done to correct it. However, there is no concrete plan in order to do this, from the action itself to the implementation of it. The politicization of climate change also makes coming up with a solution exponentially more difficult, because bills to help ease climate change often result in votes that have clear splits based on political party. Recently, President Joe Biden has proposed the $2 trillion “Build Back Better” Act. This funding and these efforts would push the United States in the direction that they announced they would be moving in at the 2021 United Nations Climate Summit in Glasglow, UK. The proposed plan would put the US at 50% below the levels in 2005. The legislation would allocate $550 billion to energy and climate programs, with the research and development budget more than doubling if it passed. The climate change portion of the bill constitutes the majority of it, and if passed, it would become the largest climate change law in the history of the United States.

 

These proposed efforts are projected to reduce annual emissions in the US by about 700 million to 1.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2030. This reduction, well below 2005 levels, would help to keep the Earth from surpassing the 1.5 degrees Celsius increase that is predicted to cause catastrophic results. The bill would also increase the funding and the efforts toward capturing greenhouse gasses emitted by factories and power plants. It would fund clean energy, like wind, solar, hydropower, and nuclear power. There would also be tax breaks for those taking advantage of renewable energy resources like electric cars.

 

Included in the plan is also an expansion of health coverage, investment in affordable housing, and increased taxing on the wealthy and on corporations. However, while the bill was able to pass through the House in November, Democrats currently lack a majority in order to get the bill approved in the Senate. A few Democrats are also in opposition of the bill because of their links to industries like coal that would be cut down by the bill’s renewable energy initiatives. Without the bill, major emission cuts would be placed on the shoulders of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but their efforts do not have anywhere near the amount of authority that a bill like this does. However, there is some hope for emission reduction, with new policies recently put in place that aim to make the industrial sector more sustainable.

Everyone knows that the COVID-19 pandemic had effects on nearly every aspect of life in the United States and all over the world, as well. However, something that few people expected when the pandemic began was the effects that it would have on pollution and the greenhouse effect. With stay-at-home orders, quarantining (both voluntary and involuntary), and businesses and schools closing, the amount of transportation and vehicle usage was dramatically reduced. This meant that the pandemic had a massive effect on the environment because of the lack of vehicle emissions–a large contributor to both air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

 

The graph above shows the dramatic drops globally in carbon dioxide emissions in 2020, especially during the peak of the pandemic in March through June. It is pretty common knowledge that vehicles are large contributors to air pollution and to carbon dioxide emissions, but looking at actual data of what emission rates look like when vehicle usage is dramatically reduced is still somewhat shocking. The drop in carbon dioxide emissions during the pandemic even looks dramatic when compared to other significant events in history that caused downward spikes, like the Great Depression and World War II.

The obvious question after hearing this might be about whether or not the cut in emissions during the pandemic was significant enough to have a lasting effect on overall emissions. The problem is that scientists do not yet know, and research into this exact idea is ongoing. The lab that I have an internship with recently got a large grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to research this subject. The project is being led by Penn State but is also in collaboration with multiple research groups across North America, including teams from the University of Colorado, the University of California San Diego, the University of Toronto, and Harvard University. It is focusing on the rapid changes in emissions and the consequent effects on local and regional air quality. The study is being done primarily with the use of observation towers located in major cities, including Los Angeles, Baltimore, Boston, Toronto, and Indianapolis. These are all areas where COVID-19 mitigation efforts had massive effects on carbon dioxide and methane emission levels because of the massive drop in commuters compared to usual. In addition to looking at how large of an impact the drop in emissions had on the cities’ pollution levels, the project also aims to test how well the towers were able to detect the drop since they are using a lot of new equipment and monitoring networks. And unfortunately, while the potential for lasting effects of the drops in 2020 is still being investigated, emission rates consequently appeared to skyrocket in 2021 in comparison.