May the Covid Lockdown have helped save us from local weather change? – Watts up with that?

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

According to The Guardian, the Covid lockdown brought “heartwarming” images of sheep grazing in an abandoned children’s playground and gave us an insight into what could be possible under a future climate lockdown.

Could Covid Lockdown have helped save the planet?

The slowdown in human activity was too short to undo years of destruction, but we did see a glimpse of the world of post-fossil fuels

Jonathan Watts @ jonathanwatts
Tue 29 Dec 2020 18.00 AEDT

When the lockdown began, climatologists were appalled by the tragedy, but also intrigued to observe what they termed an “accidental experiment” on a global scale. How much, they asked, would the Earth system respond to the steepest slowdown in human activity since World War II?

Environmental activists ask the question more succinctly: how much would it help save the planet?

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The respite was too short to undo decades of destruction, but it gave a glimpse of what the world might feel like without fossil fuels and with more space for nature.

The wildlife did not have time to reclaim lost territory, but they did have room to explore. In addition to apocalyptic images of deserted streets, the Internet hummed along briefly heartwarming clips of sheep in an abandoned playground in Monmouthshire, Wales, coyotes on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, wild boars sniffing the streets of Barcelona, ​​and deer grazing near the White House in Washington DC. Wildflowers bloomed along roadsides because the edges were cut less frequently.

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But the gains were short-lived. Once the lockdown wore off, traffic fell and air pollution rose. In a survey of 49 UK cities, 80% had contamination levels that were now the same as or worse than before the pandemic. Elsewhere, sightings of distant mountain peaks and wild animals disappear.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/29/could-covid-lockdown-have-helped-save-the-planet

I have to admit that the sheep were kind of cute. But I don’t find anything heartwarming about children who crouch indoors in misery and cannot play because everyone is afraid of developing a fatal disease. I also find nothing “heartwarming” in people who are committed to prolong this misery for the foreseeable future.

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