Millions of people self-isolating in their homes for fear of catching the deadly COVID-19 virus is not normally a sign of a healthy environment. Yet air pollution levels were sometimes 30% lower during March. In Los Angeles, one resident commented: “I’ve never seen the skies so clear for so many days. So beautiful that it’s almost painful to look at.”

The same can be said everywhere the virus has caused a widespread shutdown, including Wuhan, where the virus got its start, with blue skies appearing for the first time in many years. However, coronavirus patients in areas that had high levels of air pollution before the pandemic are more likely to die from the infection than patients in cleaner parts of the country.

This begs the question: “What is air pollution?” The answer is complicated. Some, like ash from volcanoes, is natural. But what we mean usually fits this definition: “the introduction into the air of a substance which has harmful or poisonous effects.” That includes smoke, aerosols of nitrogen and sulfur oxides, ozone and smog, all of which are poisonous, and most of which have a human origin.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 followed closely on the heels of the first Earth Day, the 50th anniversary of which we recently celebrated. It led to the establishment of regulations that have improved air quality in towns and cities. Regulations have gone a long way to reducing the effects of smog, ozone and acid rain as environmental problems, though air pollution below EPA standards continues to kill 200,000 people per year in the U.S.

But aerosols and industrial smog are generally washed out of the atmosphere with rain within a few days to a week. That is what we have been seeing through the pandemic’s economic shutdown, with the difference discernible from space.

In contrast, air pollution of a very different kind comes from the carbon dioxide produced by burning. The chemistry of burning fossil fuels is very simple: hydrocarbons (yes just hydrogen and carbon in coal, oil and natural gas) combine with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide, CO2, and water, H2O. Burning 100 gallons of gasoline produces a ton (2,000 pounds) of carbon dioxide!

The problem is that carbon dioxide, even at a very low concentration, serves as Earth’s atmospheric blanket, keeping it warmer. Having that invisible blanket is sometimes called Earth’s “greenhouse effect.” Carbon dioxide lets sunlight’s heat in (as does greenhouse glass), but it retains the infrared heat that Earth radiates out night and day. This effect was discovered almost 200 years ago.

Since then, we humans have been discovering and recovering deposits of coal, oil and natural gas formed millions of years ago — that’s why they’re called “fossil fuels.” We burn them to get the energy benefits and dump the waste CO2 into the atmosphere. There it stays for centuries — it does not wash out with rain.

Alas, we humans have become so addicted fossil fuel energy that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are now almost 50% higher than when our civilizations started. The extra CO2 now causes additional heating equivalent to the explosion of five atomic bombs per second. That extra heat is warming the oceans, causing more intense hurricanes, melting ice in the Arctic, Antarctic and mountains, raising sea levels, and making natural wet and dry periods turn into major floods or droughts, some accompanied by wildfires.

So what should we do? As we recover our economy from the pandemic, we urgently need to switch to clean energy sources. Solar and wind power are already cost-equivalent to fossil fuels (despite the latter’s heavy subsidies), and technology improvements can be expected, with further reductions in cost. Rapid implementation of wind and solar, combined with other energy innovations could be incentivized by pricing carbon fuels, with revenues returned to everyone, with equal monthly cash-back dividends. We could also save money by using less energy, using EfficiencyMaine’s programs.

When we do all that, our air will be far cleaner throughout the world because all other air pollutants would be gone.

Peter Garrett, of Winslow, is a member of Sustain Mid Maine Coalition’s Public Policy Team. He also serves on the Sustain Mid Maine board of directors and is the state of Maine coordinator of Citizens Climate Lobby.

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