From his educational farm in Boissey, in Haute-Loire, Fanny Agostini warns against those who rejoice in a nature more respected in times of coronavirus. If the progress is real, it is short-term and fragile in the face of the need to restart the economy after the crisis.
With the coronavirus, we hear it everywhere, nature would regain its rights in the face of pollution and the excesses of the economy in normal times. But does this crisis really allow nature to breathe sustainably?
The earth has never known such a peaceful spring in decades. The animals take advantage of the confinement, the green-necked ducks cross the Parisian ring road on foot, in Chile the pumas are back in the streets. Without speaking about the impressive air quality, it is as if we were in spa treatment only by breathing the ambient air, the particles of nitrogen dioxide, linked to road traffic, the famous PM10 which are at the origin of pulmonary diseases and thousands of deaths per year have vanished!
Effects that may be fleeting?
This oxygenating parenthesis for the fauna, the flora, our lungs and the climate, should not be a mirror to the larks. Because what we need, as the doctor of political science François Gemenne says very well, is not a white year but a gradual and continuous decline in our global emissions. Let us not forget that the previous crises are rich in lessons, after 2008, the CO2 emissions in China exploded the following year. When we enter the post-coronavirus period, we can legitimately fear that economic recovery will justify putting aside climate concerns.
It is the announcement of certain countries which can let us think that?
Canada is already planning a fossil fuel support plan, strained that the United States anticipates lifting all sanctions against polluting companies to help them resume their activities. In itself, business as usual. What will really count after this crisis is to understand that it is not a question of purifying the air in the short term but rather of cleaning up our economy in the long term.