Are Pandemics good for the planet?

I’m writing this in the middle of May 2020, a year that will be infamous in the future as the worst pandemic for a century. We thought with technology and medical advancements that we were invincible, but the world was brought to a screeching halt as COVID-19 gathered momentum in Wuhan, China, spread to parts of Europe, and quickly settled in almost every country in the world and started to grow exponentially. The World today remains in lockdown meaning everyone is staying at home. And it looks like the environment is taking notice. Only time will tell how this pandemic changes us but this is an interim report on whether or not the current pandemic is good for the environment.

 

Corona, COVID-19, or SARS-COV-2 is an infectious virus that spreads through droplets. It affects the respiratory system and can be deadly to anyone with underlying conditions. It began in Wuhan, supposedly due to someone eating an infected bat which caused the virus to spread to humans. It has an r0 of 2 to 2.5, which means for every person who has it, they will spread it to about 2 people. This means the infected population will grow exponentially if nothing is done and will only decrease once a large portion of the population are dead or have recovered, meaning they are immune. It is more contagious and deadly than the flu and there is currently no cure or vaccine.

 

The current strategy for the world is lockdown, meaning everyone must stay inside unless they are exercising for restricted periods, food shopping, or have an essential job such as a nurse or a grocery employee. People are also not allowed to travel between countries for non-essential reasons. This means there are less cars, passenger boats, passenger planes, private planes, cruise ships, and trains currently operating. Because of this, people are noticing a lot of changes to the environment.

 

Firstly, NASA scientists have noticed that china’s atmosphere is much cleaner, particularly in Wuhan where the pandemic first arose. This has spread to more countries as travel has slowed and economic activity is at a minimum. Less factories open means less greenhouse gases polluting the atmosphere. We have also observed cleaner water in places like the Venice canals due to lack of cruise ship tourism. Animals seem to be returning to populated areas, from deer and sheep to swans and arguably dolphins.

 

If we keep this up, we could lower emissions enough to stay within our carbon budget and under the global warming limit of 1.5-degree temperature increase. If china, the world’s largest polluter, could drop emissions by 30% permanently (and every other country following suit) it may well solve our climate crisis. But this crisis hasn’t fundamentally changed the behaviour of people and corporations. Once it is safe to do so, we will pick up the same behaviour that looks to make us overshoot our 1.5-degree goal. The fact is, we don’t have an economic model that can sustain populations while working with limited resources. Especially under capitalism, where we are now struggling to support limitless gain with very limited resources.

 

Furthermore, the fall-out from corona will be devastating. To health, to the economy, and even to climate change. The treatment of the virus requires billions of pieces of single use plastic in the form of personal protective equipment, tests, and sanitising equipment. The effect of this on the environment is comparable to the fast fashion industry, which is the second largest consumer and polluter of water. This is a necessary measure to take to save lives, but it will have a cost to the planet.

 

Finally, the Climate Crisis is inextricably linked to health. The biggest consequence of Climate Change to humans is the effect on our health. About 4.6 million people per year die of causes related to air pollution, verses about 300,000 who have died in the first four months of the pandemic. It seems like we have just temporarily swapped one respiratory disease for another.   

 

We can analyse the last pandemic for clues as to if this will really affect global warming. The Spanish flu in 1918 took place four years after the end of the second industrial revolution, a time when production and automation rapidly increased along with the release of greenhouse gases. It infected 500 million and killed 10%. Looking at the graphs of temperature increase over time, this didn’t make a dent.

 

We won’t be able to know if the pandemic had an effect on the environment for years. If the short-term pause on emissions don’t make a permanent difference, it’s possible it may have changed the psyche of a generation of people who now understand that technology is powerless against nature. Or maybe, that now we’ve seen what a cleaner Earth looks like, we won’t take it for granted again.