The dark cloud of the corona virus that has enveloped the entire world has a silver lining. The global shutdown of all activity has led to incredible environmental benefits to the planet - cleaner air, cleaner rivers, more animals and birds being seen and a rollback of pollution like never seen before. And all this from just a couple of weeks of lockdowns in most cities around the world. Who would've thought so much progress could be achieved on the environmental front, that too unintentionally, in such a short time frame?
Once the world has recovered from the corona fever and normalcy starts to return in whatever form the new normal might be, there might be serious merit in the idea of the world getting together and deciding to have one week in a year nominated for shutting down all activity, right across the world. A globally self-imposed week of quarantine. Now this idea might seem preposterous, in light of the likely economic downsides of halting all business activity around the world for a week, but then again we are currently seeing things happen that we all might have considered impossible just a few weeks ago. We are being forced to cope with this unprecedented situation, so it can be done. This week of pre-planned global shutdown could be called the week of "HOPE - Healing Our Planet Environmentally". Time has come for us to realize that, going forward, economic activity cannot remain the be-all and end-all of human endeavour. We have to respect our planet more than we have been doing thus far, and if we are prepared to learn this lesson from the catastrophic effects of this virus, maybe there is still hope for planet earth.
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