A new earth

Mt Everest and the Himalayas, seen from India for the first time in 30 years.

As people across the globe stay home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, the air has cleaned up, albeit temporarily. Smog stopped choking New Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world, and India’s getting views of sights not visible in decades. Nitrogen dioxide pollution in the northeastern United States is down 30%. Rome's air pollution levels from mid-March to mid-April were down 49% from a year ago. Stars seem more visible at night.
An unplanned grand experiment is changing our planet. People are also noticing animals in places and at times they don't usually. Coyotes have meandered along downtown Chicago’s Michigan Avenue and near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. A puma roamed the streets of Santiago, Chile. Goats took over a town in Wales. In India, already daring wildlife has become bolder with hungry monkeys entering homes and opening refrigerators to look for food. Kangaroos are hopping around the streets of Australia. When people stay home, Earth becomes cleaner and wilder.
“It is giving us this quite extraordinary insight into just how much of a mess we humans are making of our beautiful planet,” says conservation scientist Stuart Pimm of Duke University. “This is giving us an opportunity to magically see how much better it can be.” Researchers are tracking dramatic drops in traditional air pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide, smog, and tiny particles, all of which kill up to 7 million people a year worldwide.
The air from Boston to Washington is its cleanest since a NASA satellite started measuring nitrogen dioxide, in 2005. Compared to the previous five years, March air pollution is down 46% in Paris, 35% in Bengaluru, India, 38% in Sydney, 29% in Los Angeles, 26% in Rio de Janeiro and 9% in Durban. Cleaner air has been most noticeable in India and China. On April 3, residents of Jalandhar, a city in north India’s Punjab, woke up to a view not seen for decades: snow-capped Himalayan peaks more than 100 miles away. Cleaner air means stronger lungs for asthmatics, especially children. We’re not being invaded. The wildlife has always been there, but many animals are shy - they come out when humans stay home. Let’s hope it stays like this, without the virus!