Mother Earth Orchestrates Her Own 50th Anniversary Earth Day

There Are A lot of Unknowns

As I sit alone in my office, knowing that each member of my team is working safely from their own home, I can’t help but wonder, along with the entire world, how this COVID-19 pandemic is going to unfold. As I think about all the activities postponed and put on hold – meetings and conferences, promotional events, Easter, Passover and Earth Day – I started looking for the silver lining in this event. There is always something good that comes out of every event no matter how tragic it appears. What occurred to me is that Mother Nature seems to have stepped in on her own behalf for a very special 50th Anniversary Earth Day this year.

Some Good News

I began looking for any bit of good news to support this and found the following:

“The coronavirus pandemic is shutting down industrial activity and temporarily slashing air pollution levels around the world, satellite imagery from the European Space Agency shows.

One expert said the sudden shift represented the “largest-scale experiment ever,” in terms of the reduction of industrial emissions.

Readings from ESA’s Sentinel-5P satellite show that over the past six weeks, levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) over cities and industrial clusters in Asia and Europe were markedly lower than in the same period last year.
Nitrogen dioxide is produced from car engines, power plants and other industrial processes and is thought to exacerbate respiratory illnesses such as asthma.”

The same satellite shows “a correlation between the decrease of nitrogen dioxide levels in the atmosphere in cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, and the period of time when people started to limit outdoor activities due to the virus.”

Look for the Positive

I am certain there will be other bits of good news coming out of this event. I know we will get through this together and will have much to celebrate on the other side. In the meantime, please stay well and stay safe. And, even though going to the grocery store – or any store that remains open – now requires wearing a mask and maintaining social distancing, you can still get out and enjoy the cleaner air as the brilliant green of Spring spreads throughout the country and the northern hemisphere of our one world.