Something people need to understand is that there is a difference between smog and CO2.

You can get everyone off the road and the smog will clear, but as long as industry and power grids are still running, the vast bulk of CO2 is still being pumped into the air and it’s totally invisible. Covid was great for a lot of things in nature, but even if we all went to Covid-lockdown-levels of activity we would still have an out-of-control death-spiral greenhouse effect happening.

CO2 is just a gas that has molecules of three atoms instead of one or two, so it stores more energy than say, an O2 molecule. As long as we’re sending stuff into the air that can wiggle just a little harder and store a little more energy, we’re going to continue to see temperature increases. Smog is particulates, like basically dirt, soot, chunks of material. It falls out of the air relatively fast when the fires and tires aren’t moving, but most machines that power our grid and supply our products still push tons of carbon molecules into the air, and that gas goes much higher than smog where it gets lit up by the sun and stores energy that it then releases into the air and ground.