The stars have all gone away.
For a short while – a matter of a few weeks – we could stand out on our balconies to look up into the night sky and count dozens of bright lights twinkling in the heavens above Jakarta. Of course, those few are nothing compared to the sea of stars visible on a clear night at home in Labrador, Canada, but for Indonesia’s capital – one of the largest cities in the world where light pollution will always blot out the night sky as long as the power remains on – even twelve stars would be twelve more than you can usually see. The smog spewed out by the automobiles of 20 million people creates a near-perpetual overcast, night and day.
That changed with the onset of COVID-19. Once Indonesia followed the lead of other countries to recognize that the coronavirus was loose in the population, invisibly spreading at will to threaten everyone with ill-health or even death, much of the country was shut down, leading to dark malls and stores, deserted parks and near-empty streets.
The tragedy of the situation cannot be overstated – nor can the hardship the lockdown inflicted upon the millions who were denied their livelihoods – but neither should the unanticipated silver lining be ignored. We may not have been able to go outside, but suddenly we could open our windows. We weren’t letting the smog inside, but clean fresh air.
This was unprecedented in my years in Jakarta. A city usually covered by a thick grey pall momentarily revealed its beauty, displaying a line of green mountains hiding in the south and the Indian Ocean in the north. Clear white clouds adorned wide blue skies and at night the distant stars came out.
This was not to last. As in other places, although the pandemic raged on the government’s will to enforce a lockdown weakened. What was characterized as a partial lifting, a transition to a “new normal”, has allowed a free-for-all in the streets. The new normal already looks a lot like the old normal. Masks and social distancing have been forgotten in the rush to once again clog the streets with commuter traffic.
The obvious lesson the lockdown should have taught us – that to clean our air and help heal the sick environment all we have to do is limit, or better yet, eliminate the use of the internal combustion engine – is being almost entirely ignored.
Now those of us who are still self-isolating – knowing full well that the COVID-19 coronavirus is still stalking new prey – we are no longer opening our windows to the blue skies, but closing them once again against the thick choking smog.