Hyderabad: US President Donald Trump has signed the largest economic stimulus package in history worth about $2 trillion to rescue the nation from the clutches of the coronavirus pandemic.
The relief package was enacted 27th of March as the US recorded 103,942 coronavirus cases during a week in which 3.3 million people officially registered as unemployed.
Out of the 2 trillion USD, 25 billion allotted for passenger airlines was just a small piece of it. But for environmentalists and their allies in Washington DC, it was a setback.
The measures taken to curb the coronavirus outbreak include travel bans. Due to which the airline industry is suffering.
According to an international journal, around 1.1 million flights have been cancelled globally up to the end of June, and the industry is projecting revenue losses of more than $250 billion this year.
Democrats in the US House of Representatives put forward the need to include a provision that would required airlines to cut emissions to 50% below 2005 levels by 2050. But their demand was kept aside as the lawmakers focused on short-term economic relief.
Holding the industry to its word would have been a big deal, says Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group based in New York City. “I think the public is going to demand that going forward,” she adds.
The pandemic has no doubt affected nearly all the sectors of society and climate as well. In order to contain the outbreak, the country has gone under lockdown, resulting in fewer human activities and transportation.
Scientists say that due to this they have registered reductions in air pollution in China, Italy, and New York City. Researchers now say that 2020 could see the first sharp decline in global greenhouse-gas emissions since the 2008 recession.
The ensuing economic crisis could linger for a few years, reducing energy demand and enabling renewable energy sources such as wind and solar to gain ground, says Glen Peters, research director at the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo. If governments play their cards right, 2019 could end up being the year that global emissions peaked, he says.
But a key question will be whether governments are able to advance climate goals as they roll out economic-stimulus plans — and if so, to what extent. “It is not as if building solar panels is going to put the tourism or restaurant industry back to work,” Peters says.
Notably, the stimulus program enacted under former President Barack Obama after the 2008 financial crisis included investments in green infrastructure as well as $16.8 billion for research and development programs targeting renewable energy.
Money that targeted green infrastructure projects such as boosting public transport created more jobs than those focused on conventional projects such as building roads, says Helen Mountford, vice-president for climate and economics at the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank in Washington DC.
Mountford notes that India and China have plenty of plans for coal-fired power plants that have been shelved in pursuit of renewable energy, and they could be revived quickly if the focus is purely on economic growth and jobs.
"That’s an easy way to go," Mountford says, but she adds that governments would be wiser to focus on building a new future for workers and communities rather than propping up ailing fossil-fuel industries. "We are going to be urging governments not to solve one economic crisis by exacerbating another," she says.
Also Read: Global COVID-19 tracker
