Anonymous, "COVID-19, Blue Skies and the Dark Red Line", contributed by Kim Fortun, Center for Ethnography, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 9 April 2020, accessed 22 December 2024. http://centerforethnography.org/content/covid-19-blue-skies-and-dark-red-line
Critical Commentary
An image showing how COVID-19 is both cleaning up the air because fewer personal vehicles are on the road and reving up personal goods deliveries and associated freight traffic and pollution. This creates a hard red line of nitrogen dioxide emissions between the ports of LA and Long Beach and the distribution centers in California’s Inland Empire. As COVID-19 unfolds, Amazon alone expects to add about 4,000 of jobs in the region -- a region that has some of the highest poverty and childhood asthma rates in the United States, and the very worst in the nation ozone pollution.
The map compares nitrogen dioxide emissions in December 2019 and March 20, 2020. Bright orange and red "hot spots," signify high amounts of emissions.