How has the Recession Helped the Environment?

The global financial situation has impacted harshly on many areas of the corporate world, but what about the environment? According to a pair of prominent scientific figures speaking on March 6th, the extent to which the recession has reduced CO2 output will not be fully understood until next year.

Initial data provided by the US NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) highlights 2008 as having seen an overall rise in CO2 to 384.9 parts/ million - 2.2 parts/ million more than in the previous year.

However, this figure does not take into account the full depth of the financial crisis.

“To see the effect of this recession, if it's reducing emissions, I'd say it would take one to two years to see that signal properly in the atmosphere”, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s Paul Fraser commented, adding: “I don't think we've seen any signal yet."

CO2 Emission Data

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (abbreviated to CSIRO), based in Australia, operates a single monitoring site within a wider network of stations situated around the globe. These sites collect CO2 emission data, along with information on other greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide and methane in the atmosphere and, in the case of CSIRO’s Tasmania-located site, these assessments are conducted on a two-hourly basis.

“You already have a huge bank of these gases in the atmosphere so the changes you're making to the emissions each year have a relatively small impact on current concentrations”, Fraser explained.

“You're looking for subtle changes and there are lots of processes that can contribute to those, and sometimes it takes years to see the underlying pattern that you might think should have been there earlier.”

CO2 in the Atmosphere

Preliminary findings gathered at another of these sites indicate a recent increase in the overall presence of CO2 in the atmosphere. According to Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory, it stood at 386.66 parts/ million as of January 2009, higher than the 385.16 recorded in January 2008 and the 382.62 the January before that.

According to Ralph Keeling of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, fuel emissions would need to reduce by approximately 57 per cent to put a halt to the CO2 increase trend.

"What we would expect to see eventually is a slowing in the rise of CO2 tied to the reduction in emissions, not a cessation of the rise”, he advised news agency Reuters.

"But it will probably take a year or more to clearly pick out this change.

“Our records suggest that CO2 is still rising, as expected.”