Russel Norman

Covid-19’s death toll is grim and the actual human suffering is impossible to measure. By comparison, the World Health Organisation predicts that climate change will kill 250,000 people every year between 2030 and 2050. That’s five million people. Starting in 10 years’ time.

Given those figures, why does the global response to the climate crisis compared to Covid look like a tortoise versing a hare?

One of the crucial differences – Covid has been with us just over 100 days. Climate change became front page news more than 30 years ago, since then the crisis has become highly politicised between Left and Right.

Oil corporations stand to lose the most from the transition to a zero-carbon world. They’ve built up layers of PR protection, in an attempt to confound people about the science – petroleum moguls like the Koch brothers in the US, for example, spending more than $70 million to fund Right wing groups and maintain the myths of climate denial.

Organised resistance and disinformation by wealthy and powerful fossil fuel companies is the primary reason why humanity has failed to act decisively on climate. Psychology also plays a role. Human brains are not designed to easily react to large slow-moving threats.

Writer Jonathan Safran Foer points out that ‘‘we are aware of the existential stakes and the urgency, but even though we know a war for our survival is raging, we don’t feel immersed in it.’’

The pandemic is much easier to see and visualise. Watching those awful scenes of coffins piling up in Italy and mass graves in the US, you can easily grasp the threat to you and your family.

By contrast we may feel that climate change is unlikely to kill us. A dangerous misconception. You may never see it written on any hospital