Have been quite surprised by the number of people rejoicing the “positive” environmental effects of the COVID pandemic. Not only do I find it morally questionable to rejoice something that causes so much suffering, but is it even true? 1/6

It is indeed the case that air pollution has reduced and CO2 emission have gone down during the past few months. But there is no reason to believe why these emissions wouldn’t go back to pre-pandemic levels once the storm has passed.

The only structural solution to humanity’s negative environmental impacts are clean technologies, a lot of them are still early stage/high risk, for which less investment capital might be available during an economic crisis, delaying their development and implementation.

When it comes to plastics, hygiene standards may increase single use plastic usage on the short term + low oil prices reduce the amount of recycling taking place, meaning plastic pollution is likely to increase in the near term.

At @TheOceanCleanup, we’re seeing various delays because of COVID, especially when it comes to deploying and manufacturing Interceptors for rivers. We’ll be fine, but it’s not making our challenge to clean the ocean any easier.

Underlying these “silver lining” comments seems to be the belief that human progress is fundamentally at odds with the state of the environment. Overcoming this belief is what’s required to make our civilization truly sustainable.