Editorial: No silver lining, but perhaps our newly clean air can be taste of the future

The Dalai Lama can see Mount Everest. Los Angelinos can see the sky. And, presumably, Sarah Palin really can see Russia from her front step in Wasilla, Alaska. Clean air, we are told, is the proverbial silver lining to the fog of uncertainty and fear that has settled upon our daily lives in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not so fast, says the executive director of the United Nations' Environment Programme, and she offers a timely warning in an essay published earlier this month in UN News.

"Visible, positive impacts - whether through improved air quality or reduced greenhouse gas emissions - are but temporary," writes Inger Andersen, "because they come on the back of tragic economic slowdown and human distress."

As necessary as it is, responding to the pandemic will generate huge amounts of medical and hazardous waste, Andersen says, suggesting that whatever breath of fresh air the planet is enjoying now will be paid for in dirt and pollution later. Moreover, she reminds us that the few months of relief we're giving the planet during the pandemic lockdown will be but a tiny down payment on the long-term installment plan that will be required to have a material impact on the climate change threatening our future. Citing a Scripps Institute of Oceanography study, she says global fossil fuel use would have to decline by 10 percent consistently for a year to produce a meaningful change in carbon dioxide levels.

This is not to throw a wet blanket over the sweet respite asthma sufferers are enjoying these days or growing chorus of birdsongs we're all hearing in our neighborhoods. But, with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day just behind us, it should serve as a reality check for anyone who thinks managing climate change can be accomplished in the space of a few short weeks or months.

Let's not forget that the impetus for whatever limited environmental improvements we are experiencing at the moment come at the hands of a disease that has virtually shut down human activity around the globe with misery, suffering and fear. No sane person wants the kind of deprivation we are enduring now to become the template for our future.

Nor are these brief months of sacrifice acting as a reset button giving us a new 50-year stake of environmental misbehavior before we have to again confront the realities of climate change.

But, as Andersen writes, they can be an opportunity, because emerging from them will require us to put new practices and new systems in place in our economics, our industry and our daily habits. If we're smart about that restructuring, we can move things in the direction of making a positive difference.

"As the engines of growth begin to rev up again, we need to see how prudent management of nature can be part of this 'different economy' that must emerge," Andersen concludes, "one where finance and actions fuel green jobs, green growth and a different way of life, because the health of people and the health of planet are one and the same, and both can thrive in equal measure."

No, the impact of this horrible pandemic on the climate is not a silver lining; but it can point us toward a new beginning.