An Opportunity to Move Forward?

As many may have already experienced, I have started the slow transition back into the world. I am currently employed as a teaching assistant and after 3 days of work, I would say I feel relieved to be almost back to normal, yet drained - physically and emotionally. I definitely did not account for the amount of effort required to engage with other human beings as opposed to working from home. It is definitely a relief to know that we will soon return to normal life, but I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to move forward instead of returning back into our way of living 2 years ago.

The sudden outbreak of Covid-19 has affected every part of our lives, but it has also had an undeniably positive effect on the environment. Back in early 2020, scientific experts declared that our planet was close to the point of no return, but it would appear that Coronavirus has presented us with an opportunity to reverse the damage we have done to Earth over the years.

I am by no means saying I think that the Covid-19 outbreak has been an overly positive experience, but I believe that instead of returning to life prior to the Coronavirus, we should be looking at options to help make our home more eco-friendly. Since countries around the world began to initiate their national lockdowns, and make an attempt to deal with the situation at hand, the state of pollution - noise, light, air, water, and land - have been reduced to a more healthy and much less dangerous level. The sky in more industrialised areas like parts of China, London and the USA is much clearer; mainly due to a decrease in fossil fuels being harvested for energy.

There is no denying that harvesting the Earth’s natural resources does not do our home any favours. The act of burning fossil fuels in order to create energy to power the vast majority of cars, businesses and electricity releases harmful gasses and chemicals into the Earth’s atmosphere, increasing the amount of man-made pollution to a dangerous level at the rate fossil fuels are burned. Despite the foolish amount of pollution generated on a daily basis by fossil fuels, many of the businesses contributing the most towards efficiently destroying the planet refuse to switch to a more environmentally friendly source to power their corporations. Science has proved the effectiveness of electricity generated by wind, water, and the sun to be just as effective and less dangerous than burning fossil fuels.

Now that we have seen the impacts of fewer fossil fuels being burned, and how much it has healed the planet in such a short amount of time, there should be no debate as to whether or not the world should switch to more eco-friendly methods of generating electricity.