Peak CO2?

From E&ENews: Global CO2 has risen for a century. That appears to be over.

The pandemic has made a huge dent in fossil fuel consumption, but have we hit the peak of CO2 emissions?  Is there any reason that, post-COVID, the world will consume less oil, natural gas, and coal?  That’s what the author here is asserting.

However, here’s a metaphor that urges caution:

“We’ve stopped turning up the faucet pouring into the bathtub, but the faucet is still on and the water is still overflowing and causing damage all over the floor,” said Jonathan Foley, a climate scientist who is the director of Project Drawdown, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing emissions. “We’ve stopped making things worse, which is the first step to making them better, but we’ve got a long way to go.”

Another way to look at this is that, yes, the annual giga-tonnage of CO2 may be falling, but the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise.  From the observatory atop Mauna Loa:

Having said this, if we can reduce CO2 emissions quickly and steadily, the average global temperature rise will cap at 3° C  (5.4° F), which is far better than the 4° – 5° increase that climate scientists had predicted up until now.  Yet it’s not as good as the 2° C that scientists say is required if humankind is to be spared the full brunt of environmental damage that results from a warming planet.