Originating from the live animal market in Wuhan, China, the coronavirus has broken out into an international pandemic. Millions of people in China were quarantined and basically closed down its economy. Leaders restricted flights, postponed mortgage payments, and cleared streets with forced lockdowns. Trump banned all travel from different countries. Abrupt and forceful action seems to be following in the footprints of COVID-19, and as someone who comes across most of their time deal with the vision that is climate change. Today, we want to investigate this with a very simple question: what can we learn from the COVID-19 and how can we put this to climate change? First of all, the Coronavirus (or COVID-19) is a serious international issue. At the time of writing this, the global death toll has hit thousands and will continue to rise.
In this global crisis, the news media has been intensely covering the virus with constant coverage of quarantines and death tolls. Yet in opposition, an environmental issue like air pollution, which has been predicted to cause 5-7 million premature deaths every year hardly makes headlines. So, in the preference of adding to the storm of coronavirus analysis, I want to use the global response to COVID-19 as a device to understand the best way to awaken immediate climate action, if we acknowledge the risk of climate change the way we have to the coronavirus, we would be capably on our approach to a zero-carbon future. Before we can dip into this investigation we must first learn the differences between the two crises. While climate change gradually builds-becoming a catastrophic hazard over the series of decades—Coronavirus is instantaneous and right in our face. As a consequence, climate change research and data are more easily called into doubt, making it much more difficult for international leaders to act confidently and quickly on environmental problems and issues. On the other hand, Coronavirus spreads most quickly and there’s a very clear relationship between effect and cause. We know that tiny virus travels through respiratory droplets made when a person sneezes or coughs. With this information, we are then able to understand a clear boundary between actions and consequences. We know for sure that actions washing your hands frequently and quarantines will directly restrict the spread of the virus. However, Climate change is not so simple. This is due to not only its step-by-step timeline and scale but also to the successful confusion campaigns run by fossil fuel giants like ExxonMobil. At first glance, it seems like there is no direct relationship between taking action and seeing change.Climate change certainly is taking lives today, but the link between a particular death and between our emissions is long and complex. Yes, of course, from one example climate change is making certain intense weather events more likely, raising the risk of death either directly from that intense event or indirectly through things that intense event contributes to, but compare that to this statement: Coronavirus has already killed over a thousand lives. That second statement is so much more direct and so is our reaction to it.” In short, there are not only more incentives for those with power to hinder climate action than there are to prevent the coronavirus, but we are also more structurally and psychologically equipped to deal with short-term, clear-and-present dangers like Coronavirus, and less able to deal with multi-decade risky problems like climate change. Despite these differences, and in some ways because of these contrasts, there is a lot to learn from how we’ve responded to COVID-19. One of the big take-away is that there is a very clear relationship between the economy and the emission rates. Carbon Brief asserts that China’s coronavirus lockdown temporarily decreased the country’s CO2 emissions by a quarter, which Stanford Professor Marshall Burke predicts might have possibly reduced the number of premature deaths due to air pollution, so much so that China’s overall mortality rate might have decreased in the months during the height of the coronavirus lockdown. The point here is not that pandemics are good or necessary, it’s instead that there is a large, hidden toll of fossil fuel emissions that is here and now. But to prevent the millions of future deaths caused directly through fossil fuel burning or indirectly through the results of a hotter planet, the world needs to act quickly to create rapid and drastic structural change. The often-quoted Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) report asserts that we have until 2030 to make sharp global emission cuts, which many argue is impossible. The Coronavirus definitively shows that large-scale, collective, structural change is feasible in the face of a crisis. And climate change is the biggest crisis of our future generation. As Amy Jaffe, director of the Council on Foreign Relations' Energy Security and Climate Change program, puts it, "Suppose you were a policymaker, and you were thinking about what you would do to lower emissions — you just got a good instruction." Because of the Coronavirus, countries like Italy have almost done away with travel, many previously busy streets are now free of cars and people. Workweeks are shortening for some, others are embracing the potential of remote working instead of traveling long distances, and some companies have staggered work shifts to reduce traffic. In New York City, temporary bike lanes were set up, and walking and biking were encouraged over other transportation options. Of course, the answer to climate change is not to quarantine everyone in their house, that would be a complete disaster. The response to the Coronavirus demonstrates that planned economic lockdowns are not only possible but necessary to cut emissions drastically. But this type of fast structural change shows that without robust social safety nets like a clean jobs guarantee, or a strong low-carbon low-cost public housing system, extensive free public transit, degrowth will harm millions. Climate action propositions like the Green New Deal need to incorporate this type of essential framework in their policymaking because to fight climate change very fast we need a rapid structural transition. A break from the status quo. But what’s key is that this lockdown doesn’t have to mean job loss, worry, and pain, it can instead mean opportunity, free time with family, and a more intentional quality-driven economy. In short, Coronavirus shows us that the rapid emissions reductions called for in the IPCC report are not a line dream, they can and are happening. The virus demonstrates that to collect support for this needed action we need to treat climate change like it really is a global crisis. But it also shows us one more thing: that the needed reduction in emissions through de-growth has to be coupled with strong safety nets like childcare and healthcare for all, to trick all those affected by an economy-wide transition to a fossil-fuel-free world. COVID-19 is scary and is affecting the whole world, but if we don’t act in the same way about climate change, the effects of a hotter harsh planet will be much worse. The Coronavirus response has shown us a straightforward path, we just have the courage to break from the status quo and go down it.
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