Environmental Changes in the COVID-19 Era
For our culminating action project,
Sam and I wanted to highlight the things that we can do to help our climate in
the midst of a global pandemic. This is a wild time that we are living in,
nothing like any of us have probably ever experienced in our lives. From a global
disease, to possible economic collapse, to environmental justice, we are seeing
changes to our global society that we never could have expected. While there
are millions of reasons to feel like the world is ending and everything is bad,
there are still lights shining through the darkness.
Climate change isn’t new. The human
impact on climate change isn’t either. But the changes that are happening during
this time are different than I have ever seen. I’ll admit, I didn’t have a huge
amount of hope for the future of our planet (sorry Professor Huxster, I know
you wanted us all to have hope). I thought maybe we could slow things down,
take a step back from our astounding degradation of the planet, just chill out
a little with the destruction. But I am starting to see changes in the
environment that I truly didn’t think were possible.
I have had a bit of an increase of
free time lately. Sure, I have as much school as ever, but now I don’t have the
beach or all my friends to distract me. So, naturally, I’ve been spending a
little more time scrolling through Twitter and Facebook, searching for news or
entertainment. Luckily, social media can provide both. Now, social media is a
dangerous place. It’s downright scary. The spread of information, true or
false, is so fast and that isn’t always a good thing. A study was done to look
at the impact of social media as a news source and the results pointed out that
there can be a lot more bias in our personalized platforms (Diehl et al., 2019). In this case, I have been
seeing more and more posts about the changes to the environment since people began
isolation and quarantine. Some are serious, some are poking fun, but they all point out important parts of climate change in a global pandemic. Posts that suggest it's time for Nessie to show up, posts that show wildlife reclaiming cities as their own, some made up, some real.
I even found an entire 35-part Twitter
thread focusing on the environmental changes in the COVID-19 era. Some
funny, some serious, all relevant.
Seeing all
these posts, we began to wonder what was real and what wasn’t. I did a little
research and found out that, according to National Geographic, the elephants weren’t really drunk, and they didn’t
pass out in the tea fields, but they can get drunk if they try. The canals in
Venice are seeing some improvements from the decrease in traffic but the pictures
and stories that are circulating about swans and dolphins returning aren’t
quite truthful. The dolphins in the pictures aren’t in Venice and the swans
never actually left. Goats really are taking over Wales and peacocks are running through the streets in Mumbai. The BBC made an incredible list of animals that have made themselves at home in the absence of human activity.
So. What
can we do? If there are real changes happening, how do we make them stay? I, for one, would love to see more animals living their best lives but I also recognize that it would be really hard to actually coexist with the human race. To communicate our ideas, we were careful to frame them based on Stoknes principles in a positive way (avoiding that doom and gloom attitude) that allowed for personal connection to each concept without suggesting that the pandemic itself was a positive thing. We created this infographic to showcase just a few of the things that people can do to maintain a good relationship with the world around us.
Sam pointed out that we could really just keep doing what we are doing now for a lot of things. Teleconferencing is an amazing thing, and without a pro account, Zoom even gives you a reason to keep those meetings short (no time for all of that boring small talk, get straight to the point). Small businesses can always use our support and I’m more than happy to feed two birds with once scone by helping the local economy and the environment at the same time. As much as it sucks right now, the world isn’t actually ending yet and there is still so much for us to do. We CAN do this, and we WILL do this. It’s possible y’all! Our infographic seeks to point out the little things that we can keep doing to work on our environmental consciousness when it's not a global pandemic. We don't want to take away from the tragedies cause by COVID-19, but we want to point out a little bit of hope for the future.
Let us know in the comments, what else can we do for our environment during and after the pandemic?
https://twitter.com/steph_x27/status/1257288336454094849
Coronavirus: Animals take over cities during self-isolation - CBBC Newsround. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2020, from https://www.bbc.co.uk/
Coronavirus lockdowns allow animals to roam in Wales, Brazil, India, Spain—The Washington Post. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.
Diehl, T., Huber, B., Gil de Zúñiga, H., & Liu, J. (2019). Social Media and Beliefs about Climate Change: A Cross-National Analysis of News Use, Political Ideology, and Trust in Science. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, edz040. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/
Fake animal news abounds on social media as coronavirus upends life. (2020, March 20). Animals. https://www.
McCoy, Terrence. (2020). As humans stay indoors, wild animals take back what was once theirs. Washington Post. Retrieved May 11, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.
Stoknes, P. E. (2015). What we think about when we try not to think about global warming: Toward a new psychology of climate action. Chelsea Green Publishing.
https://twitter.com/steph_x27/status/1257288336454094849
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