Take a look around — or rather, up. On a cloudless day, the sky is a deep, clear shade of blue.

Take a breath — with or without your mask. Does the air you breathe in feel cleaner, fresher?

It may not be your imagination that has led you, and others, to question the air quality since social distancing protocols have been in place. Even with a reopening underway, many continue to work at home or are underemployed, thus decreasing the number of times a vehicle hits the road, or a train or plane is used for transportation.

Concerns about the safety of mass transit and air travel have reduced the number of runs and flights that not too long ago regularly moved crowds of people from one place to another. Thousands of flights are grounded, with many domestic and international flights scrubbed as people continue to work from home and recreate closer to home.

A pandemic is certainly not the avenue we would have chosen to walk in order to improve air quality, but it seems that these short (in the big picture) three months have opened our eyes and lungs to the possibility of a world with the ability to recover from human damage — if we take it to heart.

Burning fossil fuels to create electricity and to fuel travel vehicles produces nitrogen dioxide emissions, a major contributor to air pollution. In early April, NASA satellites measured “significant reductions in air pollution over the major metropolitan areas of the Northeast United States.” And while some of the change can be normal yearly weather variations, “March 2020 shows the lowest monthly atmospheric nitrogen dioxide levels of any March during the OMI data record, which spans 2005 to the present,” NASA reports.

Why, beyond the beauty of clear, sparkling air do we care? Air pollution contributes to premature deaths by the millions; about one in nine deaths worldwide.

We can see and taste right now what air, even minimally cleaner than a year ago, can look like. This is the time for us to determine how we can contribute to maintaining and improving this brilliance going forward.

Will we reconsider how frequently we need to drive somewhere to do errands? Is carpooling more appealing in order to reduce our contributions to air pollution? Will we advocate continued work from home? We have become much better these past weeks at walking and biking; can we organize our days to make use of these modes of transportation to move us where we need to go? How far will we be willing to travel for work, and what kinds of transportation will have the least impact on the environment? We can each sacrifice some convenience for a better future.

It is hard to see our economy falter, yet it may be time to recognize the long-term benefits of less human impact on this earth.

Look up. The sky is blue. Look around. People are healthier. Take a deep breath — change is in the air.