Could the COVID-19 pandemic be an environmental inflection point?
After the worst is over, our public health systems will certainly change forever, but could the fallout also result in us changing our consumption-heavy lifestyles in ways that could prevent a future outbreak, or in ways that improve the air we breathe?
The pandemic has revealed a remarkable change in pollution levels in the places worst-affected by the virus.
“It was quite surprising to see how much the CO2 dropped. But the biggest change was in the CO, the carbon monoxide,” said Róisín Commane, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University in New York.