AN EARTH DAY LIKE NO OTHER
This year is an occasion to reflect on the planet’s potential post-pandemic renewal
Earth Day, on Wednesday, will be a quiet affair this year in Montreal and around the world.
With schoolchildren not in class to learn about the importance of protecting the planet, and social distancing measures ruling out any large demonstrations, marking the occasion will be limited to what we can do at home.
Our world has been turned upside down since Premier François Legault put Quebec on pause to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. But to a certain degree, the degradation of the planet has also been put on pause as the coronavirus races around the globe, sending one country after another into confinement.
With industries shut down and cars off the roads, air quality improved drastically. A study released last week by Marc Cadotte, a biology and ecology professor at the University of Toronto, found that air pollution was reduced 20 to 40 per cent in cities under lockdown in February, compared to a year earlier.
Wildlife has reclaimed empty streets. Boars crept into Barcelona; goats invaded a village in Wales; orcas swam deep into Burrard Inlet in Vancouver, unencumbered by shipping traffic.
A Finnish study noted a 25-per-cent drop in China’s carbon emissions when economic activity was halted to contain COVID -19.
These can be seen as silver linings, the unintended consequences of a terrible scourge that has forced us to radically change our way of life and curtail our more destructive habits in order to save lives.
But there is a potential downside for the environmental movement, too.
Just when the fight against the climate emergency was finally catching on as a mainstream concern, the pandemic has captivated all our attention, resources and energy. The drastic measures foisted upon us to combat COVID-19 have been painful. And now that people have made these extraordinary sacrifices, will they be willing to go further and do more? Or will they now be terrified of the tremendous economic, social, financial and personal costs associated with the war effort needed to combat another menace to our health and welfare?
There is both peril and opportunity in a post-pandemic world, whenever we arrive at its threshold.
Massive amounts of stimulus will be invested by all levels of government to reboot the stalled economy, from major industries to mom-and-pop shops. But can this be done in a way that is greener, smarter and fairer? Or will we revert to our old ways in our haste to recover more quickly?
Many are starting to raise these questions. A group of 80 activists, artists and academics published an open letter in Le Soleil recently with a few ideas for a sustainable economic revival, like accelerating public transit, favouring low-carbon industries and bolstering agriculture to strive for food sovereignty.
Already Legault has spoken favourably of harnessing Quebec’s vast hydro reserves to grow produce in greenhouses. He has also introduced a novel program to cultivate know-how, including $45 million to top up the wages of unemployed Quebecers who go work on farms this summer in the absence of many migrant workers.
And as Canada’s oil and gas sector is decimated by problems that began before the pandemic but were dramatically accelerated by it, there is pressure from environmentalists to fund a transition to renewables, rather than invest massively in fossil fuels.
In one sign of things to come, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday announced $1.7 billion to clean up orphan wells in Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C.
The move is expected to create or preserve 5,200 jobs in Alberta and earned the thanks of a onetime antagonist, Premier Jason Kenney.
Environmentalists will have a constructive role to play in shaping and redefining the future beyond COVID -19. But the movement must not be seen to be gloating over the devastation that has upended so many industries that it previously opposed.
The “just transition” that so many ecologists tout must also be compassionate in light of the staggering number of job losses and the need to reorient workers’ lives.
The only certainty in these turbulent times is that things will not go back to the way they were. There will be a before and an after the pandemic. And we must seize the occasion to renew our society for the benefit of current and future generations.
So this Earth Day is not only a time to pause and remind ourselves that human health is inextricably linked with the health of the planet. It’s a moment to reflect on how our unprecedented response to the sudden COVID -19 emergency might inspire us to address another threat we’ve been warned about for decades.