As the world struggles to get a grip on the coronavirus pandemic, one thing may benefit from the social isolation: the environment.
As flights are grounded, fewer people are hitting the road and the economy backslides, pollution levels are dropping all over the world, and nature is reclaiming its spaces.
In Venice, following the reduction of traffic from gondolas and cruise ships, the waters are becoming crystal clear. Dolphins, fish and swans are returning to rejoice in the canals. In Wuhan, where COVID-19 is thought to have emerged back in December, the sky, usually murky, has turned blue.
People have taken to Twitter to post images of the altering phenomena, describing just how rare the events are.
One Italian tweeted: “Here’s an unexpected side effect of the pandemic – the water flowing through the canals of Venice is clear for the first time in forever. Amid the standstill for life as we know it, our city will usher in a beautiful spring!”
But the fall in CO2 emissions is likely to be a temporary blip that could well be followed by a rebound in emissions as the economies recover. As every calamity is always also a lesson, seeing the positive alterations in the environment amid a deadly pandemic is something the world should ponder. The devastating implications of technology-driven disruption and ridiculously sparse conversation around it are necessary effects of our collective tendency to succumb to the mind’s “spirit of heaviness”, as Nietzsche termed it. It is our duty to make the best use of our intelligence and counter these. That is, not to interfere with the unforced harmony of life but rather to become one with it. Action and willpower are integral to this.
A researcher at Stanford University, Marshall Burke, calculated the improvements in air quality recorded in China may have saved the lives of 4,000 children under 5 years old and 73,000 adults over 70.
“It seems clearly improper to conclude that pandemics are good for our health… But the calculation is perhaps a useful reminder of the often-hidden health consequences of the status quo”, writes Burke in his blog post.
Governments should seize this moment to step up their climate ambitions and enact robust climate policies. Removing subsidies for fossil fuels, raising taxes on carbon emissions, and initiating sustainable stimulus packages focused on clean energy technologies, can be some of those.
By Elene Dzebisashvili
