COVID’s Climate Change

by Kaliya Trias, News Editor

Kaliya Trias// THE SHAMROCK

Throughout the first few weeks in the COVID-19 pandemic, many observed a betterment of air quality and a larger number of animals roaming the streets as their human counterparts stayed indoors. The lockdowns across the world made it so vehicles were no longer on the streets, leading pollution to drop drastically. As news and media coverage focuses on other matters, the state of our Earth’s health and environment continues to decline as it is overlooked.

The United States had economists officially announce the nation was in a recession. The second-largest contributing nation to unhealthy emissions and overall pollution, the U.S. prolonged a mandatory stay at home order and in return continued to see a positive trend of less pollution.

“This may sound small at first, but it is the largest drop since World War II, as emissions have generally increased year-over-year, even during recessions,” Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Ankur Desai said.

Larger nations who produce the majority of the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) that contributes to the Earth’s pollution did see a decrease, but the cause of the drop turned out to be fleeting, as emissions continue to rise a year after the first quarantines took place.

“The levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, as well as other greenhouse gases, like methane and nitrous oxide are all going up. So we haven’t seen any decrease in concentration,” Chief of the Global Atmosphere Watch Oksana Tarasova said. “So if you look at the curve it goes up and up and up, and 2019, and 2020 are not an exception, it still goes up.”

Specialists agree that the global impact of the lockdown had little effect on climate change and is continuing to worsen.

“Climate change has worsened over the years and the biggest issue with it is that no one seems to pay attention to it,” Macomb Mathematics, Science, and Technology Center One High School senior Genna Gaitan said. “The ice just keeps melting.”

Overall, any reduction in CO2 emissions or pollution seemed to be temporary and inconsistent from changing governmental policies in each nation. Although there was a drastic and positive change in March and April, it was just as quickly squandered as many nations reopened borders and all forms of transportation.