positive impact of the coronavirus

With the dead from the covid-19 being buried in their thousand, it is no time to lecture on how we should live. But there will be an opportunity soon enough to act on the lessons learnt from this crisis.

It is thought that covid-19 originated from China in a live animal market, such establishments are a fetid mixing bowl for diseases, supplied as they are by the illegal wildlife trade. China has now banned live animal markets. But it is critical that the banned is maintained and also extended across the world.

Despite all the death recorded from this covid-19 pandemic, there is also a positive aspect to it; everything with a disadvantage must surely have an advantage. With lockdowns being initiated by different countries of the world; shutting down of most manufacturing industries, grounding of airlines and seizure of movements. These actions have benefited the earth’s atmosphere greatly, by reducing the release of CFCs into the atmosphere – these CFCs contribute to the depletion of the Ozone-layers, thus, causing climate change.

Right now, an unintentional but illuminating large-scale experiment is under way on global emissions. The pandemic has shut down industrial activities and airline flights, minimized car exhaust fumes and slashed air pollution in our cities. It is this pollution which has created a scourge of respiratory illnesses over time and has made millions more susceptible to the worst effects of the coronavirus.

Suddenly the air we breathe is cleaner than it has been in decade, due to the decline in CO2 emission. In China, the drop in airborne pollutants over two month is estimated to have saved the lives of 4,000 children below five and 73,000 adults above 70, according to Stanford University research.

But the outbreak has shown that governments can take radical and urgent actions to tackle a clear and present danger. The problem is that the dangers presented by the climate crisis, seems too distant to matter, especially to politicians. But if we think covid-19 is bad, then we haven’t seen anything yet: the effects of the climate emergency will be far worse down the line.

Amid tragedy, we have had a sniff of a cleaner and safer future. Once this pandemic is over, never will there be a better moment to put our shoulder to the renewable energy wheel, and take on the technological challenges of big-scale energy storage for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Or we will sleepwalk into another global crisis more malevolent by far than the coronavirus.