One upside of the pandemic

"The coronavirus pandemic is shutting down industrial activity and temporarily slashing air pollution levels around the world, satellite imagery from the European Space Agency shows.  One expert said the sudden shift represented the “largest-scale experiment ever,” in terms of the reduction of industrial emissions...

One of the largest drops in pollution levels could be seen over the city of Wuhan, in central China, which was put under a strict lockdown in late January."

"The changes over northern Italy are particularly striking because smoke from a dense cluster of factories tends to get trapped against the Alps at the end of the Po Valley, making this one of western Europe’s pollution hot spots...

“What I think will come out of this is a realization—because we are forced to—that there is considerable potential to change working practices and lifestyles."

I am reminded of the days just after 9/11, when I was driving between Toledo, Ohio and Madison, and for several days the sky was strikingly free of contrails.