The European Union has come under pressure to shelve crucial climate initiatives, with Poland calling for a carbon trading program to be put on hold and the Czech Republic urging that the EU’s landmark climate bill be abandoned, while airline companies have pressed regulators to delay emissions-cutting policies. China has already announced such delays, extending deadlines for companies to meet environmental standards and postponing an auction for the right to build several huge solar farms.

In the United States, after a powerful oil lobby petitioned the Trump administration to relax enforcement, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would not penalize companies that fail to comply with federal monitoring or reporting requirements if they could attribute their non-compliance to the pandemic. And in recent days it announced a rollback on car emissions rules that were a central piece of U.S. efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.