Thoughts on corona and the environment

During our e-bike expedition from 2015 to 2017, we experienced incredible, almost incomprehensible things. People appeared out of nowhere and crossed the road. A grandfather stood at the side of the road. He was holding his two-year-old grandson in his arms and watching the traffic. The poor child was on my mind. As far as the eye could see, there was only this dirty fog. The low peaks of the nearby mountains were also shrouded by the yellowish gray wall and could only be seen as a diffuse mass. What happened to this country? What a crime against the population. It occurred to me that countries that sustainably pollute and destroy their rivers, lakes and forests are destitute despite their industrial prosperity. What kind of swap? Prosperity against the destruction of natural resources. Prosperity against the destruction of the future. Prosperity at the expense of the future generation, at the expense of our children.

According to a study by the US elite university Berkely, more than 4,000 people (1.44 million a year) die every day in China as a result of heavy air pollution. That is 17 percent of all deaths in the entire country that fall victim to polluted breathing air. According to the China Human Development Report, China was already at a crossroads in 2002, where the social and economic progress it had achieved was being destroyed again by the immense environmental destruction.

The health-threatening PM 2.5 particulate matter measured in Beijing reached a record level of almost 600 micrograms per cubic meter in those days. The media around the world reported on it, which is why we also heard the news. Considering that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), an average limit of 25 micrograms should not be exceeded throughout the day, 600 micrograms is beyond my comprehension.

I actually thought that this terrible air pollution only applied to China, but unfortunately I was wrong. This man-made disaster has now spread worldwide. New Delhi, for example, is said to have the dirtiest air in the world. The government wants to save itself with driving bans. I just wonder, if New Delhi’s air is even worse than Beijing’s, what else do people actually breathe? Even many Italian cities suffer from high levels of air pollution every year, so much so that at the time, in 2016, the mayor of Naples even wanted to ban pizza baking in wood-fired ovens – and that’s no joke.

Now, at a time when Corona has shut down the world, our Mother Earth and all her inhabitants can take a deep breath. Within a very short time, the air you breathe becomes clear and pure, even over large cities and industrial areas. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) also monitor environmental pollution from space, among other things. Since many factories have closed due to concerns about the virus and traffic has come to a partial standstill, less nitrogen dioxide is being released into the atmosphere. The satellite images clearly prove this. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is therefore both a blessing and a curse. So we have the choice of what we humans want to die of, the virus or the consequences of catastrophic environmental pollution?

Tanja and I are curious to see what we humans will learn from this fatal situation. But we are convinced that we will learn from this and hope that we will not need any more disasters to change our behavior so that our children will still be able to see trees and hear birds chirping tomorrow…