Climate change requires the same global urgency as the coronavirus pandemic
While, in a matter of months, COVID-19 has changed the world as we know it, climate change has been transforming our world for decades. One can’t help but draw parallels between the two threats.
Here are some of the sad similarities between COVID-19 and climate change:
Warning: We were warned about both crises.
The climate warning was issued most dramatically in “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s 2006 documentary that showed the effects of global warming and the correlation between greenhousegas emissions and the heating of our planet. Yet the United States is poised to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and our government continues to subsidize the fossil-fuel industry.
Response: The world is responding to the virus because its effects are so shocking. Curing the climate is more difficult. The damage from a slowly warming atmosphere is sometimes tough to recognize. To prevent further warming, it is imperative that we get to net zero carbon emissions as soon as possible. We must transition away from fossil fuels and move to an economy based on 100 percent clean renewable energy.
This transition will require understand the situation, do not believe the science, or simply are frozen by the gravity of what we face.
Threat to human existence: COVID-19 hints at bold action such as the Green the threat and the opportuni- how vulnerable we are. But New Deal. At the bare mini- ties it also presents. the climate crisis if a far mum, we must fully restore Economic impact: The bigger danger. Our children the Environmental Protection damage from the virus is and our grandchildren will Agency and reinstate reg- clear when you check your need to face it. Each day ulations that the current investment accounts. But the that goes by we spew more administration has rolled cost of climate change can be damaging gases into the back. And if action is slow at calculated, too. We are paying atmosphere, warming our the global and federal levels, a bill for property damage planet. We must act now by we must persuade local officials from storms, flooding modifying our behavior and to do what they can to and fire. Even loss of business by electing officials who will slow the damage and prepare goes into the equation. pass legislation and implement us for what lies ahead. But how do you calculate policies to help us “go
To protect ourselves, infrastructure value of the secondary impacts into carbon reverse.” adaptation is key, such as physical and There is hope: As more whether to address sea-level emotional well-being? How and more people become rise, storm intensity or rising much is food and water aware of climate change, temperatures. Unfortunately, scarcity, and the spread of they are calling for action. If as some places become uninhabitable, mosquito-borne and waterborne we Americans are willing to people will have to disease, costing elect the right leaders, make be relocated, an expensive society? lifestyle changes, and possibly and traumatic undertaking. Low-income families. even learn a new trade,
We must eliminate carbon They are the least able to we will lead the global emissions. A 2018 report protect themselves from the charge to address this from the Intergovernmental virus and they are disproportionately threat. Ironically, COVID-19 Panel on Climate Change at risk from the has pushed us in this direction. calls for us to limit the increase impacts of climate change. in global temperatures They are more likely to have Globally we’ve reduced to no more than 1.5 degrees jobs that require them to emissions by reducing our Celsius above pre-industrial work outdoors, putting them travel and manufacturing. levels. We are already 1o at greater risk for heat illness, Going forward, let’s eliminate warmer and the rise which increases each emissions because we accelerating. year with rising choose to, not because a
It is as if we are speeding temperatures. pandemic has caused us to. toward a brick wall that is They are less likely to have also moving toward us. Not the resources and capacity to only do we need to brake, but prepare for and recover from we need to go in reverse. extreme climate events.
Private sector: Business is Although their homes may responding dramatically to be less resilient in the face of
COVID-19. It has a lot at a natural disaster, they may stake. We need a similar fear evacuation because of response to our climate challenges. the expense. Government, alone, The careless: We have does not have the capacity seen the pictures of people for the research and development who refuse to maintain a safe of clean renewable distance during this COVID energy and the removal of crisis. The world is filled with carbon dioxide from the people who refuse to reckon atmosphere. Some businesses with climate change. In most are beginning to recognize cases, they either do not
Susan Steinhauser is co-chair of the Climate Reality Project, Boca Raton Chapter, political chair of the Broward Sierra Club and a volunteer with the Coral Restoration Foundation.
“The Invading Sea” is part of the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a collaborative of news organizations across the state focusing on the threats posed by the warming climate.