An oasis of cleaner skies and clearer water ... but it's temporary

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

The pandemic is creating a temporary oasis of cleaner skies and waters, but at immense health and economic costs.  

 

Carbon emissions over China before and during pandemic

The skies are clearing of pollution, wildlife is returning to newly clear waters, a host of flights have been scrapped and crude oil is so worthless that the industry would have to pay you to take it off their hands – a few months ago, environmentalists could only dream of such a scenario as the 50th anniversary of Earth Day hove into view.
But this disorientingly green new reality is causing little cheer given the reason is the coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged much of the world.
“This isn’t the way we would’ve wanted things to happen, God no,” said Gina McCarthy, former head of the US Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama administration. “This is just a disaster that pointed out the underlying challenges we face. It’s not something to celebrate.”
Wednesday’s annual Earth Day event, this year largely taking place online, comes as public health restrictions to prevent the spread of Covid-19 have resulted in a sharp dip in air pollution across China, Europe and the US, with carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels heading for a record 5% annual drop.

The waters of Venice are now clear, lions lounge on roads normally frequented by safari-goers in South Africa and bears and coyotes wander around empty accommodation in Yosemite national park in California.
Meanwhile, nearly eight in 10 flights globally have been canceled, with many planes in the US carrying just a handful of people. The oil industry, a key driver of the climate crisis and direct environmental disaster, is in turmoil, with a barrel of crude hitting an unprecedented minus-$40 on Monday.
These would perhaps be the sort of outcomes seen had stringent environmental policies been put in place in the wake of the first Earth Day in 1970, which saw 20 million Americans rally in support of anti-pollution measures.

Instead, the pain of the Covid-19 shutdown has highlighted how ponderous the world’s response has been – the expected cut in emissions, for example, is still less than what scientists say is needed every year this decade to avoid disastrous climate impacts for much of the world.
“It’s the worst possible way to experience environment improvement and it has also shown us the size of the task,” said Michael Gerrard, an environmental law expert at Columbia University.
How people react to the return of normalcy after the pandemic will help define the crises racking the environment, according to Gerrard. “A key question will be do we have a green recovery, do we seize the opportunity to create jobs in renewable energy and in making coastlines more resilient to climate change?” he said. “The current US president clearly has no inclination to do this.”

 

McCarthy, now head of the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted that some Indian people were seeing the Himalayas for the first time due to the veil of air pollution lifting.
“You wonder if people will want to go back to what it was like before,” she said. “The pandemic has shown people will change their behavior if it’s for the health of their families. This has been the lost message on climate, that it’s a human problem, not a planetary problem. We have to show you can have a stable environment and your job, too.”
The problems in the natural world haven’t suddenly vanished – this week various researchers found that the Arctic is very likely to be free of sea ice in summers before 2050, that the bushfires that torched Australia earlier this year released more carbon than the country’s annual CO2 output and that the first quarter of 2020 was the second-warmest on record.
Donald Trump has signaled that he will try to provide a bailout to the US oil and gas industry, with $25bn already handed out by the US government to prop up airlines. In China, it’s not certain that the wildlife-packed “wet markets” where Covid-19 is believed to have originated will be shut down.

Conservationists warn that returning the world to its pre-pandemic settings will quickly wipe out any environmental benefits of the shutdown.

“It’s a serious wake-up call,” said Thomas Lovejoy, an ecologist who coined the term “biological diversity”. “We bulldoze into the last remaining places in nature and then are surprised when something like this happens. We have done this to ourselves by our continual intrusion into nature. We have to re-chart our course.”

Super Plants May Slow Global Warming

 

 

Each year, we produce 18 more gigatons of CO2 than what the Earth can handle. Another observation, each year, plants suck up approximately 65 gigatons of CO2 in the air, and store it in their leaves, stems, roots. Doctor Joanne Chory develops, in her laboratory, super plants able to suck up even more CO2. 
 

Suberin, Cork and CO2 

 Suberin can be found in plants, in their stem or roots. It allows the plant a better adaptation to its environment and to maximize the absorption of nutrients and water. Cork is also mainly composed of suberin. Besides, cork is known for its ability to keep CO2 prisoner. Suberin thus plays an important role in the storage of carbon in the soil by plants. 

Ideal Plants: The Harnessing Plants Initiative

“Plants evolved to suck up CO2 and they’re really good at it. And they concentrate it, which no machine can do, and they make it into useful materials, like sugar. They suck up all the CO2, they fix it, then it goes back up into the atmosphere.” - Dr Joanne Chory

 Dr Chory's idea is to do what nature already does, but with a greater impact: creating super plants more absorbent in CO2 and more resistant to climate change. The principle consists of splicing the genes of plants like beans, corn and cotton with a new compound allowing them to better absorb carbon in the air. As a result, the roots of the super plant transfer the carbon absorbed from the leaves to the roots and finally in the soil. 



 With these super plants, Dr Joanne Chory only improves on what nature does. However, she is aware that genetic modification is often misunderstood and reduced to a negative vision of GMO. Nevertheless, farmers practise genetic modification for centuries. Corn perfectly illustrates this point. Dr Chory also reminds that there is no foreign genetic material in the super plants, unlike in most of GMOs. 

For now, Dr Chory and her team have to test the plants on the Mississippi shores in Louisiana. The SALK Institute also negotiates with seed companies to democratize the access to super plant seeds, so it will be available for any farmer in the world. 
Doctor Joanne Chory is director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. 

The window for slowing global warming is getting smaller. In another ten to twelve years we will reach the tipping point, from which there is no return. That means the planet will continue to warm, regardless of what we do at that time. Wake-up EARTH!