We are into our fourth week of lockdown here in the UK. The children have been out of school for all that time. I was tagged by Carly from Mom Of Two Little Girls to share my COVID-19 Lockdown silver linings.
What I’m not going to bore you in this post are the difficulties and the worries – we all have our owns, it’s good to know that we are not alone, but for me reading all the bad news makes me depressed.
I’ve been consciously pinning down the positives and mentally list the things that I’m grateful for on a daily basis. There are still plenty of those, I feel very lucky and grateful for me and my family being healthy and safe.
My silver linings are however will be related to my passion: preserving the our planet for the future generations of all living creatures. So, I’m going to list all the positive news I came across lately, the positive “side effects” of the Corona virus. “Nature is sending us a message with the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis”, according to the UN’s environment chief, Inger Andersen.
On a side note, I’d like to add as an environmentalist, and. I’m pretty sure I am now speaking for others too, I find nothing cheerful about the virus and this is not how things supposed to be at all. The lockdown will not solve any problems related to climate change. There is nothing to “celebrate” – this is time to notice and make plans to do things differently after we’re on. the other side of the tunnel. The Covid-19 crisis may provide an opportunity for change.
Photos from last September’s XR Families Protest in London.
Reduced air pollution
We live in south-West London and the quality of the air definitely has changed for the better lately. Same with the noise and light pollution. The latter is not only bad for humans but affects all sorts of urban and suburban animals from birds to insects. But the difference on the other parts of the world in very polluted cities is dramatically positive: both the levels of air pollutants and warming gases over some cities and regions are showing significant drops as coronavirus impacts work and travel.
Flowering road verges – happy bees
According to Plantlife, as the roads are so much more quieter since the lockdown has started, councils are have also reduced grass cutting down to essential management to maintain visibility and ensure road safety. And this is a silver lining for verge wild flowers which is also good news for the pollinators. Rare wildflowers and declining bee populations could start to recover over the remaining weeks of the lockdown.
People are kinder
People around the globe have demonstrated kindness and helped each other on a very different and selfless ways: feel good stories are popping up from people sewing scrub kits for medical staff to CEOs donating billions to help others. Zookeepers are isolating in zoos to look after animals. Supermarkets rewarding their workers with pay rises. These news are truly uplifting and I want to believe that the situation brought out the best of all of us. Civilisation begins with helping others in hard times.
Reduced green house emissions
This is of course temporary too, and not at all sustainable in the economical sense of the word as it is now – but it’s great to see how much difference it makes if we could just live on less. Less stuff produced, less stuff bought and less stuff being thrown away. The last time carbon emissions fell was during the economic crisis in 2008-2009. Coal and oil industrial activities have dropped, so carbon dioxide emissions have also decreased.
Climate activists are not giving up
Whilst coronavirus took over our lives environmentalist are not giving up and pushing the climate change agenda back. As the virus is pushing the climate crisis off people’s minds, activists like Greta Thunberg are calling for digital protests too.
Perhaps, a clear conclusion can be drawn too, regarding how the world handled and mishandled the virus at the same time: interventions are more effective if they take place during moments of change. And that’s what we should take away from all this.
Tagging Simone from Midlands Traveller, Paula from Mummy VS Work, Laura from The Mamma Fairy.
19 comments
Wonderful post, I have discussed the situation with my friends in UK, they belongs to Christian Engineers in Development (CED), They also visited me many times. This pandemic teach us many lessons including the climate change acceptance, adaptation, and taking mitigating measures.
It is great to see the silver linings in all of this. It is what it is, getting scared, angry, frustrated will not change the predicament we are in. Best to be positive and trudge forward!
It was a good reading, riflessive. This is also the time to think, so you can have the idea of what you really care about. Thanks for sharing your experience. — Paolo
I have definitely seen some silver linings through this whole mess. I don’t really see much difference in pollution because I don’t live in a large city. But I do see people living more like a caring community through this. It has been nice. But I still want to get back to normal. Maybe we can all learn to be nice even when there isn’t a world crisis going on!
You have a wonderful list of wonderful things that are happening in spite of the lockdown. We should always remember that restriction to one, leads to the freedom of another. Mother Earth is given time to relax and have her me-time for now.
These are great silver linings! It isn’t easy to see the positives during this time, but you’re right – we can all make a difference moving forward.
Thanks for this positive post. It’s something refreshing to read right now. And thanks for loving our world.
it’s good to know you’re in the positive mindset of this pandemic issue right now. We really need to look at it’s good side so we won’t be embraced by negativity.
I think the positive effect on the environment is the biggest silver lining of this whole pandemic. The earth has been given a moment to breathe and if proper legislation begins from this moment forward to support green initiatives, we may have a chance to save our planet from the worst of climate change after all.
Seeing the good news about the planet during this is whats getting me through!
I love that certain things are turning out positive. Not sure about the kindness though – I’m really bothered by people who think this is a joke ans aren’t being respectful.
The COVID-19 is turning all of us into a huge shift. We need to help each other to make this world a better place, more livable than ever.
This is what we need right now – a positive perspective on things. Things are not doing quite good right now, but we should look forward to better day. 🙂
Here, lock down has put in some major changes on the environment. I am from India. Lock down has cleared the air a lot. Made it much cleaner and safer to breathe. The peaks of Himalayas can be seen from a few cities up north (A first time occurrence in the last 50 years). My major issue is that the dogs on the streets are having a very hard life. Lot of people have come forward to help. But it does not seem to be enough.
These are all wonderful silver linings! being brutally honest covid sucks because we are being told to stay home and lets be honest who hates being told to do anything. BUT along with all your silver linings, people are getting more time with their loved ones, Which I am absolutely loving!
This is really a great silver lining during this pandemic covid19 lockdown. Someday, everything will gets back to normal. Mother earth needs to heal. We should take precautionary measures seriously.
There have been some huge changes since this virus started. For such a negative situation, there has been a lot of positive things to come out of it, and I think it’ll definitely have a long term positive effect on some things in the future.
This is such a great post! Really great step to save the plants.
http://stwfblog.com/
I have been thinking about this so much – horrific that it should take a deadly virus for us to recognise how much damage we are doing to our world and indeed, how many lovely things have emerged as a result. Now we just need to keep the pressure on our govts to make greener choices post C-19 – greener buildings, more sustainable transport etc. we have to be in this together!