Since Americans have been tasked with the ultra hardest thing they have ever had to accomplish in their entire lives — staying home to flatten the curve — smog that has been hanging around our largest cities has cleared up drastically. I have never been to Los Angeles, so I can’t imagine what it’s like seeing the city’s level of smog, but apparently it is amazing people there that they can now so easily see the mountains instead.
While the world is champing at the bit to get back to the way things used to be, and extremist right wing groups are defining attempts to keep people at home as unconstitutional intrusions on fundamental liberties, these scientists say economic recovery packages must be used to strengthen and enforce environmental protection.
COVID-19’s serious toll not just on public health but on jobs is visible all around us: across our economy, shuttered shops, idled factories, cancelled events and travel, rush hours devoid of the usual traffic.
Water, water everywhere and hardly a drop is being protected by the Trump administration. In its latest act of abdication, the Environmental Protection Agency published its Navigable Waters Protection Rule in the Federal Register on April 21. The rule is scheduled to go into effect June 22, completing the elimination of the Obama administration’s Waters of the US Rule.
The COVID-19 crisis has shown that effective public transport is vital to keeping cities running. By serving essential workers in health care, emergency services, food services, and other sectors, public transport has become a service not just for some people but for all urban residents.
I try to stay away from coronavirus coverage here because … it’s not cleantech. But strange times require strange rhymes. I do spend a lot of time reading about the coronavirus, COVID-19, and the economic results, and when it seems something is underreported or deserves extra amplification, I cannot pass it up.
Perhaps society is rolling back toward normality after all — the most popular articles on CleanTechnica last week were once again led by a few Tesla stories, including two about Tesla vehicles! Yes, one COVID-19/ventilator story still slipped into the top 3, and a few coronavirus-related stories hit the rest of the top 20 … because cancelling society comes with some major side effects.
Oil tankers — 27 of them — have been spotted lurking off the coast of southern California. The footage was taken by the U.S. Coast Guard, as the Coast Guard is monitoring the “increased presence” of oil tankers that are hanging out in the seas near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
The Trump administration’s claim that two anti-malarial drugs, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, should be regarded as treatment options for COVID-19 may be one of its most dangerous forms of misinformation yet.
This pandemic has been an eye-opener on many fronts. It has exposed our personal resilience, the true leadership of some of our state governors, our dependence on rigorous science to inform effective policy making, the grit of our healthcare workers, and our ability to band together in times of struggle. However, the pandemic has also shone a light on the fragility of not only our medical system, but the broken U.S. food system as well.
