Covid-19: Damaging Economies yet Helping World’s Environment

Without a doubt, Covid-19 wreaked havoc in different countries worldwide. This caused a worldwide health crisis and forced various economies to slow down. This is felt by different businesses like Ponfish that sell varied items from baby items to microwave ovens. On the other hand, the pandemic has impacted the environment too in somewhat an intriguing and interesting way.

As Covid-19 runs across numerous parts of the globe, it spreads farther than closed borders and leading to the implementation of social distancing protocols.

How Long can we Maintain this?

Whether you believe it or not, Covid-19 affected millions of lives and the environment alike. Though, human mobility and emissions of carbon dioxide have been reduced, improving the quality of air and have encouraged wild animals to explore and come out of their homes. The question is, how sustainable this effect can be in the long run?

According to scientists, they’ve confirmed that the air quality in some regions improved after a few weeks. As aviation, industries as well as other modes of transportation come to a halt, air pollution severely reduced in countries by the virus similar to Spain, Italy and of course, China. The reduction in commuting brought by work from home policies played a big part in the reduction of carbon emissions.

Impact of Covid-19 to a Country’s GDP

As per Steven Davis, the Associate Professor in the Department of Earth System Science at University of California, it showed that there are generated approximately 500 tons of carbon dioxide per a million dollar of world’s GDP.

In fact just in 2019, there are already 40 billion tons of carbon dioxides that were emitted per 88 billion of world’s GDP. In the event that this correlation continues, the decrease of world’s gross domestic product because of imminent economic recession may result to a reduction in world’s emission of carbon dioxide in the same proportion.

Sooner or later, the outbreak of Covid-19 can offer opportunities and lessons that can result to environmental action. For example, we’ll have new baseline of what is achievable digitally from shopping, remote work, education and a whole lot more. The way we respond to this health crisis can shape how we’ll be dealing with climate crisis in the following decades. Brought by the outbreak, some habits that are incidentally advantageous to the environment might last for people will experience scarcity.