The environment, climate change and Coronavirus - EDITORIAL

In 2019 we Sri Lankans and the people of this world were all concerned with the growing problem of air pollution and its effect  on global warming. Global warming is the increase of average world temperatures as a result of what is known as the greenhouse effect.

Global warming, also known as climate change, is caused by a blanket of pollution that traps heat around the earth. This pollution comes from cars, factories, homes and power plants that burn fossil fuels such as oil, coal, natural gas and gasoline. It enters the atmosphere, spreads across the globe and traps heat around the earth for 50-200 years after it is emitted causing what is known as the greenhouse effect.   
Certain gases in the atmosphere act like glass in a greenhouse; allowing sunlight through to heat the earth’s surface, but trapping the heat as it radiates back into space. 

As the greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere, the Earth gets hotter. This process is leading to a rapid change in climate, and as the planet heats up, scientific studies have shown animals big and small, on land and in the sea, head to the poles to get out of the heat. This in turn brings them into contact with other animals they normally wouldn’t, and creates an opportunity for pathogens (infectious agents that cause disease or illness), to get into new hosts.

In 2018 schoolgirl Greta Thurnberg, a Swedish teenager who skipped school to protest climate change, started protesting in front of the Swedish Parliament building, vowing to continue until the Swedish Government met the carbon emissions target agreed upon by world leaders in Paris, in 2015 began making international headlines.
She held a sign that read “School Strike for Climate” and began regularly missing lessons to go on strike on Fridays, urging students around the world to join her.

By December 2018, more than 20,000 students around the world from Australia, the UK, Belgium, the US and Japan had joined her campaign.
In recognition of her efforts to fight climate change she was invited to address UN Climate Conference in New York in September 2019. Refusing to fly because of its environment impact, she made her way by yacht; a two week journey.

When she arrived millions of people, many of them young, took part in climate strikes in diverse parts of the world.
By November her small effort which started back in 2018 had grown into a worldwide movement. It was while climate consciousness was at its peak that the coronavirus started spreading the world over and soon took on pandemic proportions.
Amidst efforts to battle the pandemic efforts to battle climate change soon took a back seat as governments battled the pandemic.  .

Today the coronavirus has all, but brought an end to air travel and it has cut down vehicular traffic.  
As the ‘Guardian’ puts it, environmental changes wrought by the coronavirus were first visible from space. Then, as the disease and the lockdown spread, they could be sensed in the sky above our heads, the air in our lungs and even the ground beneath our feet.

As the coronavirus’ human toll mounted, the global pandemic that has so far killed more than 
1 155 235 people, and infected 43 140 173 seems to have given a gasping world a second chance. Nature, it seems, is able to breathe more easily.

As motorways cleared and factories closed, dirty brown pollution belts shrunk over cities and industrial centres in country after country within days of lockdown. Many countries are experiencing temporary falls in carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide of as much as 40%, greatly improving air quality and reducing the risks of asthma and heart attacks.

It’s a glimpse of what the world might look like without fossil fuels. But hopes that humanity could emerge from this horror into a healthier, cleaner world will depend not on the short-term impact of the virus, but on the long-term political decisions made about what follows.

After decades of relentlessly increasing pressure, the human footprint on the earth has suddenly lightened. Air traffic halved by mid-March compared with the same time last year. Last month, road traffic fell in the UK by more than 70% according to the Guardian. With less human movement, the planet has literally calmed: seismologists report lower vibrations from “cultural noise” than before the pandemic.

The virus provides a glimpse of just how quickly we could clean our air with renewables. But does the world have the political will to choose renewable sources of energy over private profit? If not emissions will roar back to earlier levels