There is no doubt about it: we are at war. But not the type of war we have grown accustomed to. No, we are at war with our opinions. Especially when we start to prepare for life post-COVID-19.
Many people have strong opinions about how we best prepare for this. Some say that it’s fine to open up and that our numbers on Vancouver Island are relatively low; others say that we shouldn’t reopen for a long time yet because even one case is too many.
In my opinion, before we move on to phase three, we should all acknowledge the most important lesson that the COVID-19 pandemic has been trying to teach us over the last couple of months: we need to treat our planet better.
For too long, we’ve been neglecting our duties as residents of our planet. This is due to our faulty thinking that living on the only planet that is known to be capable of supporting life is our birthright instead of a gift. This type of thinking is what inspires us to chop down trees without giving any thought about how we get air out of them or to pollute our oceans without taking into account all the tidal waves or water decreases that this action might inadvertently cause.
The good news is that this virus may be on our side more then we think. According to NASA, the decrease of transportation resources and industrial and business assets have led to reduced levels of nitrogen dioxide, one of the known causes of air pollution.
Although of course this doesn’t mean we’re completely without air pollution, this study vividly shows that COVID-19 has provided a significant change in the quantity of air pollution, and maybe we can all look forward to breathing cleaner air when this is all over… until everything is back to how it was and the pollution begins again if we don’t change our ways, that is.
How healthy our planet is is up to us. Let’s all make the right choice when we emerge from phase two and beyond.
BC has been one of the most successful provinces with keeping on top of the COVID-19 outbreak and that’s great, but until we all at least consider our negligent treatment of our planet and how this crisis has shown that, then, no, I do not think we should be opening up our economy anytime soon. For now, our opinionated war for our economy, and our environment, rages on.