Pandemic side-effects offer glimpse of
alternative future on Earth Day 2020
Coronavirus has led to reduced pollution, re-emerging
wildlife and plunging oil prices and shown the size of the task facing humanity
Oliver
Milman
@olliemilman
Wed 22 Apr
2020 08.30 BSTLast modified on Wed 22 Apr 2020 12.45 BST
The skies
are clearing of pollution, wildlife is returning to newly clear waters, a host
of flights have been scrapped and crude oil is so worthless that the industry
would have to pay you to take it off their hands – a few months ago,
environmentalists could only dream of such a scenario as the 50th anniversary
of Earth Day hove into view.
But this
disorientingly green new reality is causing little cheer given the cause is the
coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged much of the world.
“This isn’t
the way we would’ve wanted things to happen, God no,” said Gina McCarthy,
former head of the US Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama
administration. “This is just a disaster that pointed out the underlying
challenges we face. It’s not something to celebrate.”
Wednesday’s
annual Earth Day event, this year largely taking place online, comes as public
health restrictions to prevent the spread of Covid-19 have resulted in a sharp
dip in air pollution across China, Europe and the US, with carbon emissions
from the burning of fossil fuels heading for a record 5% annual drop.
The waters
of Venice are now clear, lions lounge on roads normally frequented by
safari-goers in South Africa and bears and coyotes wander around empty
accommodation in Yosemite national park in California.
Meanwhile,
nearly eight in 10 flights globally have been canceled, with many planes in the
US carrying just a handful of people. The oil industry, a key driver of the
climate crisis and direct environmental disaster, is in turmoil, with a barrel
of crude hitting an unprecedented minus-$40 on Monday.
These would
perhaps be the sort of outcomes seen had stringent environmental policies been
put in place in the wake of the first Earth Day in 1970, which saw 20 million
Americans rally in support of anti-pollution measures.
Instead,
the pain of the Covid-19 shutdown has highlighted how ponderous the world’s
response has been – the expected cut in emissions, for example, is still less
than what scientists say is needed every year this decade to avoid disastrous
climate impacts for much of the world.
“It’s the
worst possible way to experience environment improvement and it has also shown
us the size of the task,” said Michael Gerrard, an environmental law expert at
Columbia University.
How people
react to the return of normalcy after the pandemic will help define the crises
racking the environment, according to Gerrard. “A key question will be do we
have a green recovery, do we seize the opportunity to create jobs in renewable
energy and in making coastlines more resilient to climate change?” he said.
“The current US president clearly has no inclination to do this.”
McCarthy,
now head of the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted that some Indian
people were seeing the Himalayas for the first time due to the veil of air
pollution lifting.
“You wonder
if people will want to go back to what it was like before,” she said. “The
pandemic has shown people will change their behavior if it’s for the health of
their families. This has been the lost message on climate, that it’s a human
problem, not a planetary problem. We have to show you can have a stable
environment and your job, too.”
The
problems in the natural world haven’t suddenly vanished – this week various
researchers found that the Arctic is very likely to be free of sea ice in
summers before 2050, that the bushfires that torched Australia earlier this
year released more carbon than the country’s annual CO2 output and that the
first quarter of 2020 was the second-warmest on record.
Donald
Trump has signaled that he will try to provide a bailout to the US oil and gas
industry, with $25bn already handed out by the US government to prop up
airlines. In China, it’s not certain that the wildlife-packed “wet markets”
where Covid-19 is believed to have originated will be shut down.
Conservationists
warn that returning the world to its pre-pandemic settings will quickly wipe
out any environmental benefits of the shutdown.
“It’s a
serious wake-up call,” said Thomas Lovejoy, an ecologist who coined the term
“biological diversity”. “We bulldoze into the last remaining places in nature
and then are surprised when something like this happens. We have done this to
ourselves by our continual intrusion into nature. We have to re-chart our
course.”
This story
is a part of Covering Climate Now’s week of coverage focused on Climate
Solutions, to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The Guardian is the lead
partner in Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration committed to
strengthening coverage of the climate story.
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