I think something which the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us is that the health of our family, our loved ones and ourselves is probably the most important thing, and to do that we need to protect our environment, and more broadly, the world we live in. With the ongoing pandemic and the climate change crisis becoming more severe and threatening day by day, it is extremely evident how important it is for countries to be environmentally conscious and do everything in their power to ensure that they move towards a sustainable approach in the coming years to tackle the climate crisis before it is too late.
According to an article in Forbes, over 84% of the world’s energy was supplied through fossil fuels as of 2019. There has been a gradual change to renewable energy by various countries like India, Japan, South Korea, UK and EU who are all adopting renewable energy as a substitution for fossil fuels. However, the transition has been much slower, thus implying the dominant role fossil fuels still have in supplying electricity across the world. Today, a large amount of the world’s greenhouse gasses are emitted through the burning of fossil fuels, mainly coal, oil and natural gas which produce a large amount of carbon dioxide that not only creates catastrophic health hazards through high levels of pollution, but is also the primary contributor to the problem of global warming and climate change.
Additionally, due to the ongoing pandemic, the world has witnessed enormous economic losses – businesses have had to shut down, thousands of people across the globe are left unemployed and governments have generated barely any revenue in the past 10 months making it harder for global economies to function smoothly. As such, the world is in a grim situation with severe economic and environmental problems that need to be tackled as soon as possible. At this point, the need to transition to renewable energy has never been more important not only to revive the economy, but to also help provide a feasible solution in tackling the climate crisis.
Renewable energy – particularly solar and wind – can provide the world with a clean, sustainable and green source of energy that not only helps tackle the issue of climate change and global warming by reducing countries dependency on fossil fuels, but will also help revive the economy during the post-pandemic period. The renewable energy sector is cheaper in comparison to fossil fuels and will create much larger profit in the long term given its environmental benefits. As a result, there has been an increase in investment in this industry by both private and public sectors. Additionally, being a much more labour-intensive sector than the fossil fuel sector, renewable energy can help boost local economies by creating jobs and employment opportunities for millions of individuals.
Today, the transition towards renewable energy is the need of the hour, to revive the economy post-pandemic, as well as rebuild the global economy in a more sustainable and greener way that tackles the severe problem of global warming and climate change which has been looming over us for years.
*This article was written on the 29th of November 2020*