picture-perfect vistas once lost to
pollution now with the world on lockdown
coming back into view this the Himalayas
visible a hundred miles away in India
for the first time in decades streets in
New Delhi once some of the most polluted
in the world but with Indians forced to
stay inside there's clear roads and
clear skies as planes trains and
automobiles come largely to a standstill
across the world these satellite images
show pollution reduced to in the
epicenters of China and Italy air
pollution levels the major cities have
been cut dramatically down 29% in Los
Angeles a reduction of 38 percent in
Sydney and pollution in Paris has nearly
halved one analysis suggests carbon
dioxide emissions will be cut by two
billion tons because of the virus a
curse of more than 5% on last year the
largest annual fall on record when we're
out of the lockdown period people will
think that wasn't so bad really
this is this is a moment of change and I
don't think we're going to go back to
completely business as usual but while
business as usual is paused nature is
restoring to see life now visible in the
usually turned up canals of Venice
landed no taken over by goats in the
absence of humans and on the deserted
streets of northern Italy a bear wanders
round but when this is all over will we
just return to this
as the next cop climate conferences
postponed and governments around the
world try and resuscitate they're
flailing economies there's a fear the
environment the other global crisis will
once again fall victim I think there are
a lot of similarities between the virus
crisis climate crisis in a sense the
climate crisis is that is the virus in
slow motion but you know both areas
where you know there's been long warning
signals that this sort of event is going
to happen both seem to appear out of
nowhere but actually they're immensely
predictable and predict dead and in both
cases you know if you don't listen to
scientists and the academic community
you're going to be in trouble as the
world deals with the pandemic nature is
healing but it took something as
catastrophic as coronavirus to finally
make a dent in fixing the other biggest
challenge of our lifetime