by Tom Shafer
April 22, 2020
So, we are all experiencing and dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic as best we can, waiting for the day when we can safely return to some semblance of our lives – changed as they certainly will be. But today, on the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day, I can’t help but think that this invisible coronavirus is Mother Nature’s way of leveling the playing field, a way for her to take back her planet with which we were once trusted.
I’m not trying to be irreverent here, nor am I diminishing the death, suffering, and heartache brought on by this battle – and it is a battle. Lives have been lost, millions of people are now unemployed, and our once-booming economy has been left in ruins. Despite early denials coming from the White House and other slow-moving politicians, this is the real deal.
But is this nature’s way of healing the planet? Or perhaps a reminder of what our planet can be if we take our climate crisis seriously and make changes that work toward a fresher, safer world?
Today, for the first time in three decades, the people of Northern India can clearly see the Himalayan Mountains, which are only one hundred miles away. In Venice, Italy, accounts of jellyfish in the canals buoy the fact that water there is cleaner now than it has been in a very long time. Los Angeles, California, is experiencing its longest stretch of clean air since 1980, and that according to the World Air Quality Index (AQI), in early April it boasted the cleanest air in the world. Stories like these are being reported in every quadrant of the planet.
With fossil fuel usage reduced significantly, CO2 levels are down approximately five percent across the earth. Though we know that number will increase as we climb out of this pandemic, it does reveal what can happen, what our world can look like, if we shrink our dependence on gas and oil.
Maybe this will be the Earth Day where we really mean it, where we finally take seriously the climate change that WE are obviously creating. The doubters can’t doubt today, not with the obvious evidence all around them. Their “reasoning” is now as crystal clear as that old, smog-filled LA skyline.
The people of Earth couldn’t cleanse the planet properly, so Mother Nature showed us how – and unfortunately it took a pandemic to do it. Let us consent now that we have learned our lesson, that we will carry light from the dark, that this remarkable happening won’t be just another historical notch on the human timeline. Let us mark this Earth Day as the moment we resolved to eradicate COVID-19 AND heal our planet. At a time like this one, we should all listen to our Mother because ours truly is “A Wonderful World” – and the only one we have.
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