The New York Times has an article with maps of 3 cities showing satellite measurements of air pollution from a year ago, and air pollution this month. The cities are New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles. The satellite measures nitrogen oxides. On the maps, you can clearly see the decrease in air pollution, it is a pretty amazing comparison.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/climate/coronavirus-usa-traffic.html
However, as an article in Inside Climate News notes, a global pandemic isn’t necessarily the way we want to be cutting emissions. It’s temporary, and without a long-term strategy will probably rebound again. The decreased pollution is inadvertent, and not a planned strategy of reduction, so it can easily rebound during the recovery. Like climate change, the coronavirus slowdown affects the poor and vulnerable much more strongly. Also the worldwide slowdown is lowering oil prices, which could lead to more use of fossil fuels in the recovery. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10032020/coronavirus-climate-change-economy-emissions
The Inside Climate News article notes that there are positive lessons we can learn from the coronavirus slowdown: we are capable of changing our behavior, and hopefully it will build a sense of social cohesion and a spirit of “we’re in this together.” And we are all getting much more used to teleworking and phone and videoconferences, and some of that can persist. Let’s keep of the spirit of “we’re in this together” and during the recovery, work on keeping some of the changes that have decreased pollution.
Keep well and let’s all support each other.
