After overcoming the first coronavirus strike, China has put in place a plan of 50 billion yuan to launch the economy, which plans to build dozens of coal-fired power stations. The Asian giant announced its intentions at the end of February, in the draft for the period 2021-2025, which contrasts with the commitment made in the Paris Agreement. International agents claim that any attempt to keep the planet's temperature rise below 2°C would be left to nothing.

Coal plants are less and less in the world than other forms of energy. In addition, the sharp drop in oil prices, which has dropped the Brent barrel below EUR 27, has placed coal in the ranking of the most expensive fossil fuels. Why, then, has China decided to open more nuclear power stations?

Ballena Blanca magazine says that Beijing’s choice is more “political” than economic: these constructions will in the short term lead to an increase in GDP, as large mines will expand more, as local authorities want. But experts have warned that this strategy will not serve in the long term, due to the low profitability of coal.

Another major emergency that humans have today, and all the species of the world, along with the pandemic, is the climate, which will also directly influence how we stand on the post-coronavirus stage.

For example, in the United States, an important group of scientists, lawyers and ecologists have asked by letter to the U.S. congress to take steps to "green stimulus" the economy. The Government should redirect investments towards renewable energy: “We risk reviving the economy by further falling into dependence on fossil fuels,” they say. In his view, there are already concrete proposals from lobbies to rescue the fuel sector "at the expense of workers' rights". They also warn that in the 2008 crisis something similar happened: Uncle Sam reactivated the economy helped by big polluting companies.

That year, global CO2 emissions fell by 1%, but in the next two years they soared.

Saving people, not planes

They are not the only people who have shown that concern. Closer to us, Ecologists in Action has focused on aviation. The coronavirus crisis has plunged airlines, as airports are closed or transport is totally limited in many places. The global employers in the sector have called for USD 200 billion in aid to alleviate these losses, and EU ministers are discussing them.

Ecologists are against this million-dollar bailout. On the one hand, because aircraft are one of the largest emitters of CO2 and, on the other, because, due to their “tax privileges” with fuels, they leave a hole of EUR 27 billion unpaid in the EU each year. Thus, the benefits have increased exponentially to air operators in recent years: “Instead of using those profits, they have used them to clean up their accounts or to deal with crises, to enter into dangerous indebtedness policies and to give even greater profits to stockholders,” they say.

The coronavirus has shown these months in an unbearable way that the model itself is unsustainable: “The sharp declines in pollution levels over recent days at global level highlight the unsustainability of the current mobility model and demonstrate that a return to the pre-crisis mobility model is not a viable option in a climate emergency context.”

After this carbon fasting, you'll have to see how far the hartazgo is coming. In fact, as environmental consultant Julen Rekondo pointed out in the analysis published on the Ekologistak Martxan website, we have needed weeks to react to Covid-19, but we have been facing the climate emergency for years and we have not done anything yet.