An Inadvertent Truth

At the start of April last year, we inhabitants of planet earth discovered that we had accidentally done something revelatory. It began early in the the month, when residents of India’s capital, Delhi, realized that they could see the vibrant colors of their city, hues that had long been obscured in a foul fog of pollution. A few days later, the same thing happened in Bangkok. Previously, it was difficult to even see to the end of your block in the Thai capital – but the pall mysteriously lifted and the entire city came into focus. By the middle of the month, the change had come to Brooklyn. I remember it well. The planets and stars seemed to defy the bright lights of the big city as they packed the night sky. My partner, who’s from Switzerland, said it was the first time that the city’s air reminded her of the alpine currents of her childhood.

 

 

For the next couple of weeks, I woke early and traipsed the chastened city. My sadness after another dark night of sirens and ambulances was gradually transformed as I came upon mockingbirds that sang without competition from backfiring trucks, massive schools of fish that were somehow thriving in the polluted waters of Newtown Creek

(and the handful of cormorants that were happily diving for a free feed), a raccoon crossing the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge, a goose and gander who were rearing their 11 goslings in an industrial and commercial zone between Brooklyn and Queens. And all of this under amazingly azure skies.

This sudden sharp break in global pollution and congestion was completely unplanned, a result of the global slowdown that attended the lockdown of the planet necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. A study by scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration confirmed it: on average, the global lockdowns due to COVID-19 reduced nitrogen dioxide emissions – which occur principally from internal combustion engines – in 50 of the 61 cities the agency tracks by 20-50%. Here in New York, NO₂ levels dropped by 45 percent. The impact was so intense that average temperatures on the globe rose last year -- not due to global warming but because there was less pollution to obscure the sun.

The pandemic has already killed 2.8 million people around the world and caused tens of millions more to suffer. The lockdowns also led to severe economic hardship, and this continues to this day.

But last April also proved that we residents of earth can make strides against a different killer. A joint US and UK study published earlier this year in the journal Environmental Research concluded that the pollution from burning fossil fuels is responsible for almost one of every five deaths on the planet and killed more than 8 million people in 2018.

We can do something about that ghastly number. For a few weeks last year, it was as if the Green New Deal was the new global norm, and the future, despite the awful toll of the virus, looked brighter and bluer than it has in many decades. Now, as more people get vaccinated and much of the world moves to reopen in 2021, let us not forget the moment a year ago when we got a glimpse of a world without air pollution.

Let’s start by making April an annual month of global repair. Let us dedicate the full 30 days to a reckoning – an ecological and social accounting, during which we do all we can to regulate emissions, to cut back traffic, to massively increase our efforts to clean up our all-too-trashed planet and to make ours a more just, equitable and fair world. Let us create a planetary scorecard to show our progress in repairing the harms we have created. Let us make April a month of repair, as we take stock of this increasingly bare and ruined rock we call home and the rat-race morals of the system we live by.

Change is possible. We have seen it. With cooperation, coordination and determination, we can end air pollution. We can stop millions of people from dying early due to noxious emissions. We can help save the planet from global warming.