Climate crisis: in coronavirus lockdown, nature bounces back – but for how long?

While carbon emissions fall as human activity decreases, in the end it will be about the politics

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The environmental changes wrought by the coronavirus were first visible from space. Then, as the disease and the lockdown spread, they could be sensed in the sky above our heads, the air in our lungs and even the ground beneath our feet.

While the human toll mounted horrendously from a single case in Wuhan to a global pandemic that has so far killed more than 88,000 people, nature, it seemed, was increasingly able to breathe more easily.