Hey there WORLD!

On April 22nd each year we celebrate Earth Day, a tribute to our spectacular planet, who has supported us for millenniums. This year, Earth Day was not celebrated with eco festivals or international conferences.

The event was quietly marked from home, with Facebook and Instagram posts, hope messages, and online meetings, as people all over the world have been in quarantine and lockdown for some weeks. However, this planet is our home, so what better way to honor Mother Earth than to give her a much-needed break? Let’s take a look at the effects of the lockdown on the environment, ecosystems and at the lessons, we should learn for the future.

The Earth Day celebration turned 50 this year.

The date was established in 1970, after a massive oil spill off the coast of California.

Talking about California, statewide air pollution decreased dramatically from February 2nd to April 9th, 2020, as shown on the cleantechnica.com, with pollutants like carbon monoxide, black carbon, particulate matter, and nitrogen dioxide having plummeted.

54%

According to Forbes and its source (the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute), air pollution has dropped by 54% in Paris and almost 50% in Madrid, Milan, and Rome since last year. This is mainly due to traffic restrictions and having paused some industrial processes. So we are breathing cleaner air, which is great, but will we manage to keep it this way, once we return to “normal”? We haven’t figured out how that “normal” is going to look like, but hopefully, it will be a more sustainable one.

We aren’t the only inhabitants on this planet and the fauna and flora are essential for the wellbeing of Mother Earth.  Ecowatch.com warns us: destroying wildlife and disrupting the ecosystems can lead to the occurrence of new virus strains that can affect humans. The pandemic could be interpreted as a wake-up call to slow down on animal consumption, wild or even farm ones. “The number of emerging infectious disease outbreaks has more than tripled every decade since the 1980s. More than two-thirds of these diseases originate in animals, and about 70% of those come from wild animals. Many of the infectious diseases we’re familiar with — Ebola, swine, and avian flu — are zoonotic.”

Freedom

The absence of people on the city streets has encouraged wild animals to explore those places. The Guardian has written about coyotes having been spotted in San Francisco and deers roaming in Essex. Many of us have seen the famous video with dolphins returning to Venice, which seems to have been confected. However, wildlife has and will thrive during the lockdown. Let us just hope we can manage to help it thrive once the pandemic ends. Let us hope this crisis has made us more aware of what Mother Earth needs.

Thanks for the awesome pics Ben White, veeterzy & Sunyu!

P.S.  Don’t you just LOVE how we managed NOT TO SAY coronavirus, COVID-19, sars-cov-2…

This article is anxiety-free!