It’s been several months since countries around the world began closing their borders, grounding air travel and quarantining their residents. It’s been an unprecedented time filled with uncertainty and anxiety about the future, but could there be a positive environmental effect for a world with people self-isolating?
On average, global emissions of one of the most damaging gases to our environment, carbon dioxide, reach over 36 billion tonnes each year - a figure that has soared from the 2 billion tonnes recorded back in 1900. As a result global temperatures have increased, ice sheets have melted and the world’s climate has changed. Human activities such as burning fossil fuels for energy production and increased pollution from travel have been at the forefront of climatic change.
That was, of course, before COVID-19. To prevent this persistent virus from hopping from one host to another, people have been instructed to stay at home. In an attempt to stop the rising number of new cases, the way we once lived has also fallen to the wayside, in turn stifling globally damaging emissions.