Have you been reading the articles about how COVID-19 is affecting the environment? I sure have. They have been an eye opener. Because of factories shutting down and people socially distancing and staying home, there has been a dramatic drop in nitrogen dioxide emissions. Satellite images have shown impressive improvements in air quality over China and Italy in particular. In addition, things shutting down and people going into isolation meant less cars on the roads polluting the air around the world. It is like Mother Earth, our home planet, was given an opportunity to breathe.
What this says to me, and this makes me very excited, is that our planet has the capacity to heal herself if given the opportunity. If we were willing to find cleaner ways to manufacture products and power our vehicles, Mother Earth could potentially do the rest to clean the air. Over the last few weeks, instead of constantly and unsuccessfully trying to clean an ever-increasing-man-made mess of air pollution, the earth’s natural filters have been able to make some headway in the battle. So much headway in such a short period of time. This is why I feel excited. If I was a religious person, I think I would call this a miracle. Perhaps I will call it a miracle, a miracle of Nature, because if I believe in anything it is the power of Nature. She has proven herself a worthy Goddess.
I would like to think that the human race has learned something from this, but human beings can be both admirably smart and ridiculously selfish and stupid. Just look at the news stories of students currently spending spring break on the beaches and in the bars of Florida instead of practicing social isolation. They are America’s future leaders. None of them are thinking of the fact that they may spread a virus that could kill one of their love ones. So even though I am excited over the power of Nature, I have to be realistic. China has started to put their factories back into production and already the satellite images for the last couple of days are showing an increase of nitrogen dioxide into the air. People are anxious for everything to get back to the way things were. This little miracle of nature is not going to influence the countries of the world to do the right thing. This is not going to end like a Hallmark movie where everyone unites and agrees to change their ways to save the planet no matter how much some of us wish it would. Too bad though because the opportunity to learn from an experience such as this doesn’t come around very often. In this case it will be a lost opportunity.
Thanks for reading.
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