For Millennials. By Millennials.
No one could have imagined 2020 to have turned out like this. Coronavirus has completely shaken all of our lives down to its core. However, surprisingly enough it’s not all bad news. Well, not for humans at least. This is because there are some who are benefitting from this pandemic – they are Planet Earth and the environment. And believe it or not, we’ve seen it happen before in Chernobyl and the Avengers!
The Environment is finally cleaning itself
It’s obvious that humans have done a lot of damage to the Earth’s environment. Pollution, Climate Change, and Global Warming are concepts everyone is aware of. However, the Coronavirus outbreak has changed everything. Apart from putting our lives at risk, it’s actually playing a role in cleaning the planet!
Pollution Levels are going down in China, South Korea, Italy
As soon as these countries went into lockdown, the streets went empty and the factories closed down. This had a very poor effect on the economy, but it couldn’t have been better for the environment! After the lockdown, NASA released satellite images of pollution over China. Unexpectedly, the clouds of smoke and soot were swept away in a matter of months!
Similarly, there was a sizable reduction of smog and smoke above the skies of Italy and South Korea too. Even though Coronavirus is fatal for humans, it is also saving human lives by reducing pollution! It’s a weird way of mother nature balancing itself out, but the effects on the environment are now visibly clear – especially in Venice.
Venetian waters become crystal clear
Recently, a few tweets went viral on Twitter that showed how clear the water in the canals of Venice had become.
https://twitter.com/ikaveri/status/1239660248207589383?s=20
https://twitter.com/finessabae/status/1239788402196779011?s=20
This was because of the lockdown, and the resultant reduction in Nitrogen Dioxide levels in the water. Some of the pictures of that crystal clear water can leave you in awe!
It truly makes us realize the bad impact humans have had on the environment. However, saying that this was an unexpected outcome would be slightly wrong. We have seen this happen before, both in real life and pop culture!
We’ve seen this before, with wildlife in Chernobyl
Ever since the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear disaster, the town of Pripyat and it’s surroundings are in an exclusion zone. That part of Ukraine/Belarus is un-inhabitable for a few thousand years, but only for humans, not wildlife. Ever since the disaster, wildlife populations have surged in the region. Somehow, humans are more lethal to animals than a nuclear disaster itself
Endgame gave us a glimpse too
In Avengers: Endgame, Thanos’s entire motivation was to bring balance to life around the universe. And in his weird, twisted way, he did that. As soon as he snapped his fingers, a balance was restored. As our favorite Avenger, Captain America said that whales were spotted in the Hudson River. The reason for that was because there weren’t ships on the bay anymore. But of course, killing off half the universe isn’t how we should be going by it.
We, as humans, really need to look at the damage we do to the environment. There’s still time for us to fix the mess we’ve made. Hence, it’s really important that we get our act together once and for all, once we’re done dealing with COVID-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV2).