Tuesday, March 16, 2021

CO2 Story

 One of the smaller regional public TV networks in Germany (NDR) had a curious climate change story this afternoon.

With all the chaos of Covid-19 in 2020.....someone added up the CO-2 emissions, and announced that Germany had done the 'impossible'...emissions had fallen 40-percent compared against 1990.

A lot of features in this 'impossible' accomplishment?  

They suggest a few things (renewable energy, dumping of coal plants, etc).  I'd go and probably list out more than a thousand things that fell into play during 2020.  

Clothing shops shutdown for a huge amount of the year?  People didn't drive into cities to shop for clothes.

Beer delivery to pubs?  You can count up almost six months of 2020 where pubs were shutdown and no one consumed the beverage.

Tourism?  It wasn't shutdown just for international guests, but for regular Germans as well....so buses did stop in villages to pick forty guests for a 8-hour trip to some Bavarian castle.

Germans on short-work?  For my German son's case....he probably spent over 120 days in 2020 at home (collecting around 65-percent of his normal monthly check, minus sales)....so he didn't drive to work for those days.

My German wife?  She did around 80 days in home-office status....meaning the car sat in the driveway for those days.  

Theaters, kinos and dance-halls shut down?  No social life?  Cars sat idle.

Trips to Turkey, Greece or Thailand?  Zeroed out for the vast majority of 2020.

How things are looking for 2021?  It wouldn't shock me if they almost repeated 2020.  

Does this mess up the CO2 theme/message of the environmentalists?  Well....no one is openly suggesting that part of the story.  But you have to wonder about selling of climate chaos in this type of situation.  

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