Humanity, interrupted

There was a day a couple of weeks ago where, for a short time at least, Los Angeles had the cleanest air in the world.

Yeah, L.A. The place where the term “smog” was coined. It was better these days (post Clean Air Act) than back in the ’80s where we got daily alerts and sometimes had days we couldn’t go outside for recess at school, but it was still a rare day that the near permanent haze hanging over the basins and valleys would clear. With the reduction in traffic after the county and state-wide stay-home orders, it’s been an almost mystical transformation to see crystal clear blue skies for weeks on end. We’ve gone from punchline to paradise.

Of course the balance sheet here is that we can’t really go outside to enjoy it, at least not without proper caution. Jogging without a facemask is permitted but you have to watch out you don’t get within 10 feet of others. Me, I’ve never been much of an outdoorsy type so the lifestyle change barely registers except that telecommuting sure is a hell of a lot easier to deal with than my usual commute where it would usually take me about an hour to go about 20 miles.

Meanwhile as all this has gone on photos around the world are showing other unforeseen effects of dialing back our “free-range” interactions with the Earth. Some, like dolphins in the canals of Venice, were faked, but the canals have undeniably become much clearer without churning oars and constant human detritus. And though the dolphins were debunked, other wildlife has tentatively (or confidently) made its way into the empty streets of cities around the world.

If you’re a fan of apocalypse fiction then you’ve probably run across some “after man” theories or concept art speculating what the Earth would look like in a future scenario with humanity (for whatever reason) out of the picture. It’s often pretty cool stuff showing things like fish swimming down a flooded 5th Avenue or hollowed-out skyscrapers covered in greenery as the natural world reasserts its dominance. But all of it assumes something like years or even centuries have gone by. Here we’ve got a milder take on the concept happening in real-time and it’s only been a month or so since a lot of us started staying off the grid.

Is it a good thing? A bad thing? Well, it’s definitely an interesting thing. Maybe Mother Nature has far more capacity for bouncing back than we ever suspected, if we’re just willing and able to take our foot off the gas once in awhile.