COVID- 19 Rescues The Earth From Climate Change

Climate change is inevitable, but maximum impacts can be avoided by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations at a low level and that can be achieved by global coordination efforts that can make a sufficient difference rather than individual actions by countries.

Since the 1960s until now, an increasing number of scientific publications have advocated the idea that human activities influence the environment. Moreover, changes in the environment affect all species on the planet, including humans. Reducing the human impact on the environment requires realizing that the environmental crisis is a behavioral and social problem and not an environmental and technical problem and that necessitates a significant change in our lifestyle. Although people have rejected the idea of change over the past decades, now and in light of the invasion of COVID-19, they find themselves forced, albeit temporarily, to stop their activities that have always been devastating to natural systems.

This new pandemic has brought some short-term natural benefits in that the cessation of industrial activities around the world and the significant decrease in transportation had reduced greenhouse gas emissions and allowed the Earth to breathe again. In China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, and according to a study by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, closing Hong Kong factories, evacuating transportation throughout Hubei Province in China, and keeping people in their homes to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus, had an unintended benefit in terms of a decrease in carbon emissions by a quarter in early February, compared to the same period last year, sending a message of reassurance to humankind that long-term change would greatly improve the miserable reality nature is experiencing.