Why climate change is a pandemic in slow motion (and what that can teach us) - The Corr... - 0 views
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opinion analysis climate pandemics crisis crises sustainability
shared by Ed Webb on 07 Jul 20
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the really dangerous thing about the coronavirus isn’t that the disease it causes can be very serious – it’s that it’s not all that serious for many people. The fact that many people who catch Covid-19 hardly have any symptoms has been a huge contributing factor in the spread of the virus.A similar problem applies to climate change: most of us simply experience so few of the consequences of the Earth heating up that we hardly even notice it – let alone feel any urgency to do something about it. A planetary temperature increase of 1.5C? For a lot of us, that seems like "just a minor flu" too.
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On a planet that shares a single atmosphere, concepts like "here" and "there" are misleading. The steak we eat "here" threatens a farmer’s harvest "there". The plane someone catches "there" makes the water levels rise "here".
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Each and every individual, organisation and country that reduces its carbon footprint is a small but indispensable link in the fight against global warming. Eventually, we will reach the tipping point: so many people will have switched to zero-carbon energy sources that fossil fuels will be "overcome".
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The elderly, people of colour, immigrants, low-educated adults, people in debt, people on lower incomes, people in developing countries, refugees, the uninsured, the unemployed: all these groups have an above-average risk of falling prey to this pandemic, both physically and socio-economically
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a sustainable society is not a pandemic bunker. The similarity is that the change that is needed will affect every aspect of society. There really isn’t an app for it.
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The coronavirus pandemic shows that “keeping distance” and similar measures are primarily for the privileged, only available to people who “can afford to retreat in individualism”, as OluTimehin Adegbeye, our correspondent in Nigeria, put it so powerfully.
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These flaws are more visible now than ever before. The way we deal with animals is untenable. Patent laws in the pharmaceutical industry pose a real threat to public health. The fossil fuel industry, like the financial sector, is only able to exist by the grace of privatised profits and socialised losses.
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Continuing to see Earth as an infinite resource and the sky above us as an infinite garbage bin, in order to artificially boost quarterly profits, with CEOs sitting in reality-proofed boardrooms comparing the size of their bonuses while begging for taxpayer bailouts but refusing to pay taxes themselves: no, that’s a “normal” we simply can’t afford going back to.
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Thousands of deaths and intensive care units (ICUs) flooded with patients struggling to breathe cannot be denied for very long, even by the most persistent manufacturers of alternative facts – unlike climate refugees (“fortune seekers!”), loss of biodiversity (“the dinosaurs died out too, right?”), and global warming itself (“temperatures have risen before!”).
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we are, in fact, capable of bringing about sweeping societal change to protect us all. Now is the time to resolve not one crisis but two. Starting with sustainable spending of the trillions (!) being allocated to coronavirus-related measures right now.
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No government bailouts for fossil industries without an exit strategy towards a zero-carbon business model within 30 years. No government bailouts for companies with primary bank accounts in tax havens. And even more government funding for truly sustainable alternatives. How about giving that a try?