COVID-19 & the environment
Welcome back to the Plague Pit – and to issue number 38.
I sent out the last Plague Pit subscriber update on 29th June. A COVID second wave looked a long way off then. Things are a bit different now.
To cheer us up (or maybe not) I’m delighted to welcome guest writer Kit Redfern to the Plague Pit. Kit is a sixth former at Winchester College who is applying for a place to study Ecology and Conservation at the University of St Andrews. He sent in this thoughtful piece about the impact of the pandemic on the environment.
Governments across the globe have introduced restrictions and lockdowns in order to try and thwart the spread of COVID-19 and lessen its impact. These have drastically altered human life and our daily activities. As the most influential species on the planet, humans can exert a global impact on the environment and other organisms, simply by a change of routine.
By March 23, 1 billion people were under some form of confinement measures. By mid-April this had risen to a peak of some 4.5 billion people across 110 countries and territories. This is roughly 58% of the global population [1].
These lockdowns forced millions of people to work from home instead of commuting daily, with a predictable decrease in car journeys [2]. In addition, travel restrictions greatly reduced the number of commercial flights. As of May 4, international flights were down 80% compared with the same time last year [3].
These changes contributed to falls in air pollution. Levels of nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, and PM2.5 (particulate matter with a diameter less than 2.5µm) were lower in March and April 2020 than in 2019 – a period which coincides with the introduction of many lockdowns and travel bans [4]. In Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak started, the change in nitrogen dioxide levels is easily visible in images from the NASA Earth Observatory.
By March, decreased pollutant levels in China probably led to a fall in air pollution-related deaths, according to calculations published by Marshall Burke, Assistant Professor of Earth Science at Stanford University. While these ‘lives saved’ may have exceeded deaths directly due to COVID-19 at that point, this is to ignore indirect death rates and the other public health consequences of a pandemic-disrupted economy [5].
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions also fell during the pandemic. Despite this, there has been no discernible impact on the actual amountof carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This stood at a little over 417 parts per million in May, according to Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) in San Diego [6] – the highest it has ever been in human history [7]. SIO estimate that emission reductions of 20 to 30 percent would need to be sustained for a year to slow the growth of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This shows it is not enough to simply reduce greenhouse gas emissions to counter global warming – we have to actively remove them from the atmosphere.
Although many believe the coronavirus pandemic has been exclusively beneficial for the environment – with cleaner beaches and less noise and air pollution [8] – there have also been negative outcomes.
One is the increase in deforestation in the Amazon – up 64% in Brazil this April, compared with last year [9]. The pandemic has prevented work by many environmental enforcers, facilitating widespread illegal logging. Trees remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it away – a process essential to tackling climate change. When trees are logged, Earth’s overall capacity for carbon storage is reduced. If trees are burnt, or left to rot, carbon is actually released into the atmosphere.
The pandemic has also hindered talks on climate change and the environment, such as the COP26 UN climate conference [10]. Agreements on global warming have been delayed, with potential adverse consequences for climate and environment in the future.
Despite this, it seems likely that the overall short-term environmental effect of the pandemic is positive. The question is whether new human behaviours, beneficial to the environment, can be sustained
During lockdowns, businesses have found it possible to have many employees working from home. Will this practice continue if COVID-19 subsides? If it does, fewer commuters would likely mean a drop in carbon emissions.
Opinion polls suggest that people do want to protect the environment – and to keep the positives which have arisen from the crisis [11]. Coronavirus provides a very unique opportunity to stop, take a look at many aspects of modern life, consider what is really necessary, and then change our path for the better. It has also given us a brief glimpse of the positive changes which can occur if we all change our habits – across the globe.
With such a devastating impact on economies worldwide, many governments are pumping money back in, trying to give them a boost. Where this money gets invested will surely shape the way we live our lives in the future, and thus determine whether Coronavirus is the cause of any long-lasting impacts on the environment. Sadly, already there are hints of returning to pre-pandemic ways. In China, pollution and traffic have already returned to previous levels [12]. In addition, the last time carbon dioxide emissions dropped, during the 2008 global financial crisis, they quickly rebounded along with the economy in 2010. This may hint that the same thing is likely to happen in the following few years.
Kit Redfern
References:
[1] https://www.barrons.com/news/coronavirus-4-5-billion-people-confined-01587139808
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52461913
[4] https://www.science.org.au/curious/earth-environment/what-impact-will-COVID-19-have-environment
[5] http://www.g-feed.com/2020/03/COVID-19-reduces-economic-activity.html
[6] https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/
[7] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18480821/
[8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720323305
[10] https://unfccc.int/news/cop26-postponed
[12] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/06/why-COVID-19-will-end-up-harming-the-environment/