The spread of the coronavirus has taken its toll on many as lockdown efforts are extended, schools remain closed and many businesses stay shut requiring many to continue working from home. Whilst this comes with its own challenges, many have come together in efforts to rise to the occasion – book sales and board game sales have found an increase as parents and children find alternatives to going outdoors, digital markets are performing extremely well – measures to prevent some accessing services are in place but these casinos aren’t in the gamstop initiative and are available to everyone, as well as our favourite online streaming services such as Netflix offering a fair distraction. Amongst the good news too, however, is the huge climate recovery we’re seeing during a level of reduced vehicle traffic.
As flights are grounded, and cars parked, and commercial businesses close, globally we’re seeing levels of pollution plummet as well as signs that some countries are reaching an estimated carbon footprint level years early than anticipated – this may not serve as a permanent solution as eventually, lockdown efforts will lift and businesses re-open, but it is possible that it may serve as a backdrop behind some levels of reform when looking at the impacts of climate change. 
An initial look shows some great signs, however as it is only a temporary measure and a temporary reduction it’s hard to take much from the current situation – the big difference may come through the coming months. As with many other areas such as the economy, experts will be studying the effects of the lockdown, whether this is on the populations, the economy, or in this case the environment – an attempt will still be made to capitalise as much as possible of the positive environmental signs we’ve seen during this time and there will be no doubt that the more conscious leaders will push these efforts.
On the opposite side of the coin, however, the next big concern is that as everything gets a big kickstart once again we double down on the worse side of this – commercial businesses in a hurry to re-open, residents eager to get back to work and other industries such as aviation making a big push to get back to a place of recovery may very quickly reverse the good signs we’ve been seeing and put us back on a bad path.
As of now, only time will tell what may happen – parts of Europe are still in recovery and it may be a number of months yet before things really get kick-started again, and the US is still going through the worst of it despite calls for businesses to reopen as soon as possible. Many eyes will also fall to the east, as China begins heavily rolling back their restrictions as numbers suggest a fast recovery – the hope would be there is a lesson to be learned from this and from the positive data we’re now receiving and wide-scale change is continued to be implemented to slow the impact of climate change and to ramp up efforts many are already taking, but that is yet to be seen.