"Isolation and other shifts in behavior during the coronavirus outbreak could also alter our greenhouse gas emissions. But will the changes stick?"

Wonders John Schwartz (in the NYT).

The strategies of avoiding coronavirus — staying home, not flying and driving, using on-line shopping — also reduce your carbon footprint. This social distancing is a green new deal... if it persists. Ever start something for one reason and then continue it for another?

Charles Duhigg, the author of “The Power of Habit” and a former New York Times reporter, said habits built over lifetimes are hard to shake. “As soon as the environment becomes stable again, the habit starts to reassert itself” unless there is a “powerful reward” to the new behavior.

Mr. Duhigg said that while there is no set time for a habit to form or change, some cultural habits could, if the pandemic response lasts long enough, take hold. One example: shaking hands. “I could see other kinds of behavior replacing that habit, or maybe just diminishing,” and wondered aloud whether his own children might one day think “hand shaking is a weird, old-timey thing.”

Yeah, but shaking hands didn't affect your carbon footprint (handprint?).

Some practices, like videoconferencing and telecommuting, may gain ground, Mr. Duhigg said, for a reward of saved time and trouble. He expressed doubts, however, that leisure travel behavior would see a similar shift. “It seems unlikely to me that people will say, ‘You know, I loved not taking vacations. I learned staying at home with my kids is so rewarding!’”

Oh, the sarcasm! What I'm picturing is a married couple where one of them says I loved staying home, and the other is massively alarmed if not angry. The one then adds the climate change factor to his (and I do mean "his") side of the argument, and the other explodes in a confetti burst of wokeism. Ha ha, the anti-travelist wins! The erstwhile bucket list kicks the bucket, and the forced stay at home goes on and on... until death comes to take that frustrated travel bug on that long-anticipated, truly exotic trip — out of the world altogether.