If there’s a silver lining for the COVID-19 pandemic, it would be that pollution has decreased. Science Alert reported on the decrease in pollution due to coronavirus. Someone with the motivation and the mathematical skills could estimate if the decrease in carbon emissions is so significant that keeping it up would slow down climate change. One could easily think that this amount of reduction would have a significant effect on it.
This leads to the question: Could we stop climate change if there was a pandemic every couple of months?
In reality there won’t be a pandemic every couple of months. What’s happening right now isn’t very common. However, we can look at what drives down pollution. People are working from home and not commuting to work. Still, work gets done. It’s as if for large amounts of people, work could be done from home as well.
Is it really necessary for everyone to commute to work every morning or is it something we’ve accepted as a thing we just do?
Apart from commuters, travelling for leisure has been cut down. While I myself am an avid traveller and truly love going to new places for fun, I have to admit that there is a positive impact on the environment because of the reduction in vacationing abroad. This of course is a bad hit on economies that rely on tourism, which in the long run would force them to adapt if things were to never go back to the way they were.
I believe this is a monumental chance to look at our society and think if everything we do is necessary in order to keep our species thriving. After all, the biggest losers of climate change are us, not anyone else. Nature corrects itself in the long run but humans might not be there to see it. Even if we were, would it not be better to be in our best and most advanced shape?