Good news: An end is in sight for the COVID-19 pandemic. Bad news: Nitrogen dioxide pollution is on the up as life returns to normal The COVID-19 pandemic has passed the one-year mark, and as vaccines roll out, there is light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. Here's something to dampen the spirits, though: global air pollution levels are rising, thanks to increased human activity. A year ago, Europe's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), …
For that, there are lorries sitting in trailer parks, many of them empty, some of them with engines idling to keep refridgeration going. In january, parts that we purchased from the UK took 2.5 weeks to get across the border. I hope that this is better now. Still, I agree that putting all those lorries on a (longer distance) ferry may have a positive impact on emissions (assuming that the ferry runs on a somewhat clean fuel).
Personally, I hope that fuel cell powered lorries will become a thing. The higher purchasing price of the system would be offset by lower fuel consumption over time due to the high conversion efficiency and the vehicle utilisation (unless it sits in a lorry park in Kent, that is).
> It does seem strange that anyone would choose to eat an M&S sandwich, let alone anyone with the culinary delights of Paris at their disposal
Paris's culinary delights are great, if you have the time for a full meal. I've also got fond memories of acquiring a kebab at around 4am after a fun night of staggering around rock bars; it's the first (and only, to date) kebab I've had which came with some sort of cous-cous side.
On the other hand, if you're looking for something to eat quickly, continental sandwiches tend to be somewhat limited. You generally get a choice of cheese and ham, curried chicken or tuna, on either white bread or some sort of perforated flatbread.
To be fair, this may be because there are so many more culinary delights to be had if you go to a proper restaurant.
But it's always a bit disheartening to pull into a continental service station or supermarket for a quick bite, only to be presented with the equivalent of "spam, spam, spam or spam..."
IIRC, the whole of Hubei province, about 60 million people, was shutdown by about Jan 27 or so. All public transport and factories were closed. I'd imagine that would have a quite significant and almost immediate effect.
It's be interesting to see a more month by month model, likewise for the EU and USA, over the last full year.
The bounceback effect will almost certainly show even higher than pre-pandemic levels IMHO, because factories will be trying to catch up on lost production and haulage companies will need to deliver all that stuff. Likewise, China, like or or not, is the worlds manufactory and has been coming out of lock-down a lot longer than much of the rest of the world because they had the ability to heavily lock-down and enforce it far more strictly than most other countries. They are making hay while the sun shine as one of the few countries operating almost normally at the moment.
> They are making hay while the sun shine as one of the few countries operating almost normally at the moment
For a given level of "normal"; they're having to throw a lot of resources - and manpower - at monitoring for infections and containing them, all the way up to marching the entire population of major cities (by European standards at least - Shijiazhuang and the like have 10m+ inhabitants) in for testing. Those costs are going to come due at some point.
Admittedly, the question is whether those costs are lower than those for countries which haven't locked down to the same degree. Time will tell on that front!
> The bounceback effect will almost certainly show even higher than pre-pandemic levels IMHO, because factories will be trying to catch up on lost production and haulage companies will need to deliver all that stuff
Dunno. There's certainly going to be some repressed demand, but whether it'll be enough to absorb all the "excess" that has been produced remains to be seen. Especially since when we come out of lockdown, there's likely to be a global recession to further dampen demand.
After all, it's not like I'm going to be able to walk into a pub in May and make up for 12 months of lost drinking time. Nor am I going to splash out on an extra pair of shoes or a coat this year, since the ones from last year (sadly) still have plenty of wear left in them. And my car'll probably sail through the MOT, given how few miles it's done. And so on.
So there's going to be a whole lot of stop-starts for manufacturing, not least because with some products likely to have weak demand and/or a backlog which needs to be cleared down, manufacturers are likely to switch to products which are still profitable. Which in turn will lead to oversaturation in those areas, and a significant lead time when it comes to restoring manufacturing of the original products.
Personally, I suspect China's going to accelerate it's efforts to increase internal consumption of it's manufacturing output. Which may give rise to opportunities for other countries.
But again, time will tell!
"Nor am I going to splash out on an extra pair of shoes or a coat this year, since the ones from last year (sadly) still have plenty of wear left in them."
<stereotyping>Clearly you are not a woman</stereotyping>
Yes, the one in the current fashion, a dressing gown! --------------->
><stereotyping>Clearly you are not a woman</stereotyping>
You've clearly never seen me at the weekend ;)
But yeah. Globally, we're in a position of weak demand, and for many things, there's likely to be a lot of stuff stuck in the channels. Which means it'll either have to be scrapped or sold at a reduced price to clear the way for new manufacturing. All of which further hits the bottom line for both manufacturers and retailers.
(OTOH, demand for some things has vastly increased. Handwash, laptops, etc. And companies which have been able to pivot to those have often found success. As have smaller companies and individuals who have moved into specialised niches for delivering things, such as food and drink. But I sadly doubt their efforts are enough to balance out all the negative impacts Coronavirus is having!)
So it seems likely that we'll end up with a lot of companies folding or pivoting to new markets, at least until things start to settle back down again.
Arguably, Brexit is acting as a scale model for this, as trade levels between the UK and EU have dropped significantly, thanks to a mix of stockpiling, C19 and the additional cost and complexity of shipping stuff with the new costs and logistical overheads. It's unlikely they're going to recover back to previous levels anytime soon - and even then, there's likely to be a lot of fallout in the process...
"increasing in Europe and elsewhere around the world, too, as shelter-at-home restrictions ease."
Here and now there is no hint of shelter-at-home restrictions easing anytime soon, so I guess you must be writing this from 1-2 years in my future. Can you please send me the winning lotto numbers? I'll share the gains with the past you.
The only places that are going to take 1-2 years to sort out vaccinating everybody are third world countries waiting for vaccines from elseware after the first world has completed their rollouts, or countries relegating themselves to second world status to due to suffering from incompetently planned and worse executed rollouts with governments deliberately undermining public confidence in the vaccine to reduce the demand down to their delivery levels.
Pretty much everywhere else appears on track to have finished their rollouts to everybody down to 18 in Q3 this year.
Considering that both Germany and Belgium are phasing out nuclear power and replacing it with gas plants, the air quality over the coming years will be getting much worse. Add to that the sluggish pace of electrifying transport in Germany and the continuing use of heating oil and fossil methane for heating, I'm not holding out much hope for my lungs getting a proper breather any time soon. Pun intended :)
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