During lockdown, most of us are spending our time with children, watching movies, trying out new recipes, reading a few books or playing indoor games etc.
Clear blue skies, Clean air, Cleaner rivers. Wild animals taking a stroll on roads.
However, it is a perfect time to make people realize on a global level that flattening the curve of climate change and environmental destruction is just as important as flattening the curve for COVID-19.
Ever since the coronavirus pandemic struck across the globe, several reports have emerged highlighting the return of many species to their natural habitats.
Cleaner air has perhaps been the single greatest positive effect of the lockdowns on the environment. The Air Quality Index (AQI) sank to as low as good/ satisfactory’ category in most of the cities as per IQAir reports.
In India, road accidents have been a major cause for high death rate i.e. one serious road accident in the country occurs every minute and 16 die on Indian roads every hour and this way about 17,000 people have been saved from getting killed in the previous 41 days. However, on the other side, it has been 1,323 coronavirus death in India.
Globally around 7 million people die every year due to health problems caused by air pollution. The most important factor behind air pollution is the burning of fossil fuels, emitted in heating, energy production and transportation which has been standstill in most parts of the world, due to lockdown.
Due to Lockdown, the crime rate has gone down across the world.
Residents living in Jalandhar, India are seeing the view of the Himalayan mountain range for the first time in their lives, due to the drop in air pollution caused by the country’s coronavirus lockdown and have shared pictures of the mountains from rooftops and empty streets, amazed by the view which has been hidden by pollution for 30 years. The Earth has essentially stopped vibrating. And the major decrease in the hum of normal human activity has led to a surprising shift in Earth’s vibrations. With travel effectively ground to a halt, seismologists around the globe have reported a drop in seismic noise, according to an article in the scientific journal Nature. With all this extra time to think and research while stuck at home, we are once again realizing our real needs – nutrition, shelter, and social ties. This, in turn, has also brought about a new transformation on a global scale. The significant reduction in transportation, industries and energy usage due to the coronavirus pandemic has had positive implications for our air quality and the temporary fall in CO2 emissions due to coronavirus has been a respite for the planet – it should be a wake-up call for us It gives us an opportunity to change our lives and improve our own health, our quality of life and the health of the planet. With these observations, I recommend that we should observe a compulsory lockdown once every year.