As cities and, in some cases, entire nations weather the pandemic under lockdown, Earth-observing satellites have detected a significant decrease in the concentration of a common air pollutant, nitrogen dioxide, which enters the atmosphere through emissions from cars, trucks, buses, and power plants. The drop, observed in China and Europe, coincided with stringent social-distancing measures on the ground. Air pollution can seriously damage human health, and the World Health Organization estimates that conditions stemming from exposure to ambient pollution—including stroke, heart disease, and respiratory illnesses—kill about 4.2 million people a year.
The cleaner air could lead to a brief respite in parts of the world with severe air pollution even as they battle the coronavirus. According to an analysis by Marshall Burke, a professor in Stanford’s Earth-system science department, a pandemic-related reduction in particulate matter in the atmosphere—the deadliest form of air pollution—likely saved the lives of 4,000 young children and 73,000 elderly adults in China over two months this year.
“There’s a quantifiable temporary benefit,” Joseph Majkut, the director of climate policy at the Niskanen Center, in Washington, D.C., told me, referring to Burke’s analysis. But—and it’s an important “but”—“as we go about our recovery, I think we’ll go back to business as usual,” he said. A drop in emissions this year, including carbon dioxide, the pollutant that causes global warming, won’t make a dent in the long-term effort to manage the climate crisis. “We’re not solving climate change by having a global pandemic,”
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