While the human world is suffering from the novel coronavirus outbreak, our planet is actually showing certain signs of “recovery” from the damage caused by human activity. According to the BBC, new satellite images released by the European Space Agency showed that levels of air pollutants and greenhouse gases have “fallen sharply” in major cities in Europe and the United States ever since the lockdown started.

This is what happened after recent discoveries in Antarctica. An international team of 89 scientists found that the ice in Greenland and Antarctica is melting six times faster in the 2010s than it was in the 1990s. And in February, Argentina’s Marambio research station in Antarctica recorded a record high temperature of 20.75 ℃ on the continent.

So what exactly will happen if the temperature keeps rising and the ice keeps melting? A third study might give you an idea. A team of scientists drilled a hole into the seafloor in west Antarctica and extracted (提取) material from underground, in which they found traces of roots, spores and pollen—typical products of a rainforest—that dated back 90 million years ago. In other words, Antarctica was very likely a rainforest back when the dinosaurs walked on Earth. But given the fact that the South Pole has four months of darkness during winter—even millions of years ago—scientists believe that the rainforest could only exist if the greenhouse gas concentrations were extremely high back then to keep the continent warm when there was little or no sunlight.

“We didn’t know that this Cretaceous (白垩纪的) greenhouse climate was that extreme,” Johann Klages of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and a co-author of the research told the Guardian. “It shows us what carbon dioxide is able to do.”

Ice or no ice, Antarctica will be—and has always been—fine with extreme changes. The human world, however, may not be.

Now, during the coronavirus lockdown, we’ve seen the changes resulting from less human activity. Hopefully, we’ll hold on to those changes—not for Antarctica or the planet, but for ourselves.

The State of California is depending on its forests to help cut down planet-warming CO₂. But that climate-change strategy may be risky, as new research from the University of California, Irvine(UCI)reports that trees in California’s mountains and open spaces are dying from wildfires and other pressures — and fewer new trees are filling the blank.

“The forests are not keeping up with these large fires,” said study co-author James Randerson, the Ralph J. and Carol M. Cicerone Professor of Earth system science at UCI. Across the whole state, tree cover area has dropped 6.7% since 1985. “These are big changes in less than forty years,” he said. It’s the first time that researchers have been able to measure tree population fall in California, and find out the reasons (wildfires and woodcutting).

For the study, the UCI-led team used satellite data from the USGS and NASA’s Landsat mission to study plant changes between 1985 and 2021. They found that one of the most obvious falls in tree cover was in southern California, where 14% of the tree population in local mountain had disappeared, maybe everlastingly.

“The ability of forests to recover(恢复)from fire appears to be dwindling in the south,” said Jonathan Wang, a researcher in Randerson’s research group, who led the study coming out in AGU Advances. “At the same time, the state’s coverage of bushes and grasses is rising, which could mean more everlasting ecosystem shifts(生态系统转化).”

“The speed and scale of fall in tree cover is different across the state. Tree cover in the Sierra Nevada, for example, stayed relatively unchanged until around 2010, then began dropping suddenly. Fortunately, in the north, there’s plenty of recovery after fire,” said Wang, perhaps because of the area’s higher rainfall and cooler temperatures. “This threat(威胁) to California’s climate solutions isn’t going away anytime soon,” Wang said. “We might be entering a new age of bigger fire and vulnerable(易受损的) forests.”

Fashion operates on desire. We want our dressing style to be unique as well as part of a group. Such wishes can be fulfilled immediately. But to overcome such a desire we need to reflect on the fragility (脆弱) of our planet. This means there should be a better way to keep the pleasures of fashion open to all of us than promoting single-use clothes as desirable.

The fashion industry has benefited from globalization to mass-produce goods at the cost of human and environmental damage. Every year, 100 billion new pieces of clothing are produced by one out of six people worldwide. Yet, only 2% of them earn a living wage. Furthermore, the industry has for too long promoted over-consumption as a good thing. About a fifth of mass-produced clothing does not even sell and ends up being buried or burned. Clothes now account for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Synthetic fibers are being found in Arctic Sea ice and in fish.

Luckily, recently the market has witnessed a new trend. New research shows that 51% of Britons tend to purchase longer-lasting clothes rather than throwaway items, up from 33% a year ago. What’s more, more brands are responding to the mood. For example, H&M and Zara have made new commitments to making clothes more environmentally friendly. John Lewis has also encouraged a culture of handing down children’s clothes.

At no other time in human history has fashion been so accessible to so many people. Technology will help fashion greener. Better regulation of supply chains will help too. There is a shift from getting rid of clothes to repairing, reusing or even renting them.

However, it is hard to see how this will be enough to make fashion truly environmentally friendly if the industry still produces more and more clothes. Obviously, more has to be done to stop the persistent demand for expansion in our society.