The Unexpected Environmental Consequences of COVID-19

Over the course of these past few weeks, it seems like COVID-19 has morphed from a distant menace to an omnipresent threat always ready to take something else away from us. With widespread media coverage of the virus, it’s easy to get anxious and lose perspective, especially when worried about yourself and those around you. However, despite the overwhelming negatives that have come from this virus, there have also been small positives such as people taking their health more seriously, appreciating things they had previously taken for granted, being less wasteful, and finding their creative side while self-isolating. Most importantly, though, the environment has seen vast improvements while we’ve been indoors.

With fewer cars on the road and planes in the sky, air quality has seen a considerable improvement not only in the U.S but worldwide. Notorious for its air pollution, L.A has seen its longest stretch of “good” air since 1980; with a 20% improvement in overall air quality, Los Angeles now sees some of the cleanest air of any major city in the world. L.A is not alone as countries like China and India have both seen 30-45% improvements in air quality since stay-at-home orders have been put in place. With air pollution levels reaching historic lows in many places, water pollution levels have also reduced significantly, since with fewer fossil fuels burning in the air, there are fewer particulates to dissolve into water vapor. Even noise pollution has decreased, making life much easier for animals who use sound to navigate, find food, attract mates, and avoid predators. 

Unfortunately, many of these environmental effects are temporary and will most likely be reversed in a couple of months. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. This quarantine has given us time to assess which aspects of modern life are absolutely necessary and taught us that reversing the damage that we’ve done to our environment isn’t impossible. Hopefully, moving forward, we’ll remember this lesson and start taking measures to clean up our environment since now we see how quickly it can be done. Though such a tiny silver lining can hardly make up for the devastation wreaked by COVID-19, we should still allow ourselves to appreciate the fact that perhaps when things return to normality, we’ll all be going out to fresher air and cleaner skies than before.