Lessons from COVID-19 about the climate crisis
If we can harness what we are learning, our chances of saving the planet will improve
Learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic are directly applicable to the urgently required response to the climate crisis. It is almost a dry run. Applying these lessons will help us to save not only human lives, but our planetary home.
First, we now see the necessity and ability of governments to lead. The “free market” could not have handled this pandemic. Nor can it handle the climate crisis. Governments have stepped up and organized on a scale unimaginable just a few weeks ago. Similarly we need governments at every level to act on climate and put a safe future ahead of economic growth. A stable climate, breathable air, drinkable water and clean food are the fundamental priori- ties for life.
The response to the COVID-19 crisis is being informed and driven by science, despite that being inexact and adjusting as the situation unfolds. It’s obvious that decisions need to be based on the best medical science, not politics and not corporate profits. That’s how we must respond to the climate crisis. The time for politics and corporatedriven agendas is over. Like COVID-19, the physics of global heating does not negotiate or respond to empty promises.
We are all now familiar with the concept: we must act immediately and strongly to spread the impact of the threat over time so our coping systems are not overwhelmed. For the climate crisis, that means curbing carbon emissions quickly to slow down atmospheric accumulation. That means stopping expansion of fossil fuels and quickly reducing their use while scaling up energy alternatives. Waiting for the climate to get really nasty will be too late. Containing COVID-19 requires extraordinary measures of self-sacrifice and loss of some liberties. These have been well-accepted because there is clear understanding of their crucial role in saving lives. Similar commitment is required to save the very ecosystem that sustains all lives. Young people — protesting in the streets and even getting arrested — already understand this. We all need to join them.
For good reasons, both COVID-19 and global heating engender immobilizing fear. This fear must be validated; the threat is serious and dangerous. We need to come together to grieve and to console each other, and to understand that we are in this together. Then we need solid information, to be engaged, to strategize, to understand how we are part of the solution. This is true for the COVID-19 pandemic, and even more so for the climate crisis. We have come to the somewhat-belated realization that our health rests on the health of everyone else, from the skilled workers of the health-care system, to the cleaners, the PSWs, the orderlies, the cafeteria staff, the grocery clerks, the truck drivers, the garbage collectors. These are the “heroes” we rightly acknowledge with nightly applause.
Our success also rests on the health of the impoverished, the homeless and the aged, the most vulnerable among us. And just as with the pandemic, climate catastrophes do not pick favourites, but do have a more profound impact on the most vulnerable.
There will be heroes of the climate crisis, too, and our collective health will rest on them; the scientists, the strategists, the environmentalists, the visionaries who’ve been at this for decades, studying, learning, proposing and warning. We’ll need skilled tradespeople to revamp the grid, oil and gas workers to shut down the orphaned wells and organic farmers who know how to reinvigorate the soil and provide food security. These and others will be our heroes.
We are being given an opportunity to learn from a terrible catastrophe, a virus that has laid us low, but has shown that we can respond powerfully and quickly to a shocking, rapid and intense threat. We need to take these difficult lessons and leverage them like we’ve never seen before. The climate crisis is bigger, and more serious. Sadly, unlike COVID-19 there won’t be a vaccine. We do not have much time. We need to act now.