Dolphins have not returned to cleaner canals in Venice, Italy this year. Nor was the critically endangered Malabar Civet seen on the roads of Kerala, India. And, unlike a memento, there were definitely no dinosaurs in Times Square. Most memes claiming “nature is the cure” when COVID-19’s business around the world was misleading or a joke to ease a heavy year The reality is that, if it manages to keep people together for some part of the year, the epidemic will not leave us with a healthy planet.
There were fewer airplane trips and car trips this year, meaning less tailpipe emissions. But it has not resulted in massive environmental benefits. If anything, this year really showed us how far we have to go to clean up the huge mess we have created on our planet.
For starters, assessing air quality in 2020 is critical. In early January, it seemed as if the skies over China had cleared – the first country to face the novel coronavirus and its economic consequences. Nitrogen dioxide levels on China plummeted dramatically in maps released by NASA and ESA. As the epidemic progressed, similar reports of cleaner skies emerged around the world. In November, NASA discovered that the epidemic had reduced nitrogen dioxide concentrations globally by about 20 percent. Nitrogen dioxide is a toxic gas found in tailpipe emissions, so it makes sense that it was reduced as people lived at home. That’s just one part of the picture when it comes to air quality.
As nitrogen dioxide pollution is declining, another dangerous type of pollution is stabilizing and increasing in some places in the U.S. Particulate matter pollution – mostly made up of soot fuel – does not run high during epidemic-induced home-based orders in April, a recent study found. It is especially dangerous during epidemics because of how much carcinogenic pollution damages people’s lungs and hearts – organs that also have COVID-19 defects.
Pollution may not have caused the epidemic significantly, but pollution has certainly exacerbated the epidemic in some hardened communities. Research this year has linked COVID-19 to an increased risk of death – especially from dust – from living with air pollution. Blacks and Latino people who are U.S. Under the disproportionate burden of air pollution in India, they also suffered more hospital admissions and mortality during the epidemic than white Americans.
Researchers have some ideas about why particulate pollution increased and nitrogen dioxide shrunk in the U.S. this year. It may be because more dust comes from diesel burning trucks, which deliver more packages than usual when people buy from home, but they need to test this hypothesis. “That’s the mystery we’ll try to solve,” says Christina Archer, lead author of the study and a professor at the University of Delaware’s College Ledge Earth, Earth, Ocean and Environment.
Even if some pollution is temporarily reduced, it doesn’t really do us any good to move on, Archer warns. “We’ll finally get back to normal life,” he says. As COVID-19 restrictions eased, nitrogen dioxide levels began to return to the world’s cities in the middle of the year. “Decrease [in pollution] It’s temporary, but not really purposeful – I don’t think it helps much. Strategies, and planning and conscious efforts to reduce air pollution that help. “
The same is true for greenhouse gases. U.S. The year 2020 saw its biggest drop in carbon dioxide emissions, as Americans sat at home to stop the spread of COVID-19. Worldwide emissions have actually fallen to their lowest level since April 2006. By the end of the year, global CO2 emissions are projected to decline by about 7 percent. But to prevent the world from paying attention to the catastrophic level of climate change, we need to continue cutting more than one percent of our emissions each year over the next decade – without any epidemics putting pressure on us. Without these deliberate cuts, the overall amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to rise, as it did this year.
“Human waste is in the gale atmosphere and it doesn’t go away,” said Ralph Keeling, a professor of geochemistry at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of San Diego. Edge Earlier this year. “CO2 is being built right now, not in response to what we’re doing, but in response to what we’ve been doing in the last century.”
After all, this is not a numbers game. Once we release pollutants into our environment, it comes back to haunt us. All the carbon dioxide that warms our planet warms the summer and makes fires more destructive. Hot weather triggers a chemical reaction that creates fog, which is one reason why Southern California – one of the most polluted regions in the U.S. – had more fog than it has seen in decades this year. Hist Historical Wildfires in the western U.S. darkened the sky in the second half of the year. Simultaneous breathing of smoke became difficult and this year U.S. Has reduced the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector.
As 2020 approaches, we are still in the throes of a global health crisis caused by Covid-19. Once that danger is passed, however, pollution will still pose a threat to people’s health and the planet. That is, unless we heed the advice of scientists like Archer and make a more conscious effort to do something about it. If we really want to bring nature back to health, we cannot rely on that epidemic for ourselves.
