Covid-19 has devastated the global economy and forced governments around the world to pour trillions into the recovery effort.

The pandemic could have been the decisive moment in the fight against climate change - an opportunity for leaders to bail out the environment and pivot the planet toward a greener future.

Instead, some of the biggest fossil fuel-producing countries are injecting taxpayer money into propping up polluting industries. And exclusive new data shows these decisions are taking the world a step closer to a climate catastrophe.

“This is the one chance that we have,” said professor Niklas Höhne, founding partner at the NewClimate Institute, a climate think tank, and co-author of an upcoming study from the Climate Action Tracker.

The research shows that the world is running well behind its already insufficient targets of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees.

“We are in a situation where enormous sums of money are (being) spent,” Höhne said. “A similar opportunity for spending so much money from government budgets will not come in the next 10 to 20 years".

The United Nations says it is necessary to phase out fossil fuels to stop catastrophic man-made climate change. But getting rid of them is going to be hard. Around the world, communities rely on fossil fuels for their energy, their jobs, their livelihoods. And, in turn, governments rely on their votes and taxes.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/09/world/climate-covid-money-intl/