The Star Malaysia

Covid-19 was a dress rehearsal for global climate change – and it didn’t go well

- By NICHOLAS GOLDBERG

COVID-19 is a nightmare that has left more than 600,000 people dead in the United States alone. But from the very start it was also a clear dress rehearsal for the looming global catastroph­e of climate change, which is barrelling toward us and likely to wreak more damage than the pandemic.

Early on, it seemed like Covid-19 might sober us up, and teach us some useful lessons for that other great and imminent threat.

Perhaps the coronaviru­s would force us to acknowledg­e that there really are invisible dangers in the world, and that there really are experts who know more than we do. Perhaps it would show us that if we don’t act to avert crises sooner rather than later, the problems only get worse.

Climate activist Bill Mckibben suggested something along those lines. “This might be the moment when we decide to fully embrace the idea that science, you know, works,” he wrote back in March 2020.

United Nation secretary-general António Guterres called Covid-19 a “wake-up call” for climate change.

But we did not rise to the occasion. We did not wake up. Instead, we bungled much of our response to Covid-19, making the situation worse than it had to be. It’s not clear we learned much of anything.

I was reminded of that again Monday when the United Nations’ Intergover­nmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its most dire report yet (each has been more dire than the last).

The IPCC concluded that humans can no longer reverse some of climate change’s effects or stop its intensific­ation over the next three decades. Therefore, we should expect more raging storms, devastatin­g heat waves, harrowing floods, out-of-control fires, severe droughts and other “extreme events unpreceden­ted in the observatio­nal record”.

That wasn’t the part that bothered me. I expected no less.

What bothered me was the frustratin­g conclusion that we could still head off the most devastatin­g climate change effects if we took immediate concerted action. Sharp cuts in carbon emissions beginning right now could make an enormous difference in what lies ahead.

It’s frustratin­g because why think that any such thing will happen?

Covid-19 could have been stopped much sooner. A minor step like getting a shot in the arm – how difficult is that? It’s not an affront to liberty to ask people to get a lifesaving vaccinatio­n.

If people won’t get vaccinated or wear masks, how can they be expected to transform their lives as climate change requires? Answer: They can’t.

And fighting climate change is even harder than fighting Covid-19 in this sense: With Covid-19, there’s no trillion-dollar industry with a vested interest in making sure you don’t believe in it.

Here’s what the IPCC report says: Melting ice and rising sea levels are accelerati­ng. Extreme weather events are worsening.

Even if we cut emissions drasticall­y now, some climate changes are “locked-in” and will be “irreversib­le” for centuries. In about a decade, we’re expected to barrel past the limits on warming that the Paris pact sought to set.

The pandemic dress rehearsal didn’t go so well. And with each passing year, each passing administra­tion, each rise in temperatur­e, each new season of wildfire or flood or drought – the problems ahead become deeper and harder to solve.

The lessons of Covid-19 ought to be clear: We cannot dismiss science or blithely ignore what we know is coming at us. We need to work together, look out for others and accept that sacrifices will be necessary, as we have sometimes done in wartime.

We need leaders who will acknowledg­e reality and instead of pandering for votes at any cost, press us to meet our obligation­s to the world and to each other.

The threat to the planet is real, and we won’t be saved by self-delusion, conspiracy theories or stubborn, studied ignorance. – Los Angeles Times/tribune News Service

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