Blue skies, clearer horizon, breathable air, and visibility of stars at night are just some of the few indicators that gave the people the idea that our earth is healing amid a pandemic. Many claim that this same pandemic brought healing to this world as people were kept away from streets due to community quarantines/lockdowns. But, is our earth really healing?
These community quarantines/lockdown measures disrupted the normal routine of people in a global scale. Operations of various industries were placed on halt, movements (from one place to the other) became limited, road decongestions became evident, and environmental noise were drastically reduced. With this, a less chaotic earth was unveiled to its inhabitants.
To the amazement of everyone, an idea of a healing earth was established. Different photos, videos, and articles circulated on the web, which made people enthusiastic enough to accept the idea. It is just normal for people, especially city dwellers, to celebrate and be excited about the earth's progressive healing. Being a person, who spends most of his/her time living in a concrete jungle can easily embrace and find solace to this earth's new environmental era. But, is our earth really healing?
With the absence of carbon-emitting vehicles on the street, the temporary extinction of heavy road traffic, and the non-operation of industrial plants, the earth was able to breath, but not totally healing. People being away from streets mean the absence of carbon emission, but not the complete absence of human impact to the earth's dying state. How?
People were sent home and were forced to do various activities within the premise of their houses. Workloads and meetings are being done home through the aid of emails and teleconferencing apps, physical classroom learnings are diverted through virtual classrooms, entertainments to ease boredom happen 24/7 and [most likely] through the aid of different types of media that relies solely on technology. For a month or more, people are consuming huge amount of power though cellphones, computers, air conditioning, and other sorts of electrical equipments that lead to large amount of greenhouse gas emission. If the person lives alone in his/her pad, he/she will [most likely] rely on either food deliveries or on instantly-cooked food, which are contained in an overwhelming disposable packagings that lead to large amount of solid waste generation.
Humans' capacity to pollute earth was not really eliminated, but diverted. Instead of producing large amount of carbon emissions, we were diverted to produce more greenhouse gasses and solid wastes. So, is our earth really healing? For me, it's not.
Our earth is just having a break... a break from smog and other forms of pollutions that are visible to the atmosphere; a break from toxic fumes we give to its fresh air; a break from excessive lights that cover the magnificence of stars; and a break from extreme human activities that deplete its environmental assets. We are not really allowing earth to heal, we are just buying time for the earth to take a break and to prolong decay towards its destined death.
Image source: https://www.techspot.com/news/82883-google-earth-latest-tools-users-create-share-maps.html
Image source: https://www.techspot.com/news/82883-google-earth-latest-tools-users-create-share-maps.html