From early on in the Covid-19 pandemic, according to The Guardian, a common refrain has been, “At least maybe now we will get serious about addressing climate change.”
Environmentalists and climate scientists around the world were certain that 2020 would be a year of action, but the coronavirus really messed up all the planning and worthwhile projects that ended up being put on hold or even abandoned.
“For two months or even three, people like me were shut right out because ministers were dealing with aspects of COVID in the cabinet,” said Mark Jaccard, one of Canada’s foremost climate scientists, reports CBC Canada.
The Simon Fraser University professor’s political manual, The Citizen’s Guide to Climate Success, finally hit bookstores in February – just before the COVID-19 pandemic got into full swing. Jaccard’s book suggests the only realistic path to defeating climate change is political action to install “climate-sincere politicians and governments and then hold their feet to the fire.”
But while eating less meat or disowning plastics and recycling may make some of us feel like we are doing our part to save the Earth, the issue is bigger than any of us can imagine, and it will require concerted government action to push things the other way.
“You have policy windows,” Jaccard said, referring to those moments such as after Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans and the surrounding area in 2005, or following the past year’s devastating forest fires in Australia and the U.S. west, when the public and politicians are forced to take climate issues seriously.
Jaccard says COVID-19 is just another version of a series of global events that have diverted our attention away from the bigger danger that is still facing the world.
Which will kill us first?
If the coronavirus pandemic doesn’t kill us, world leaders warned the United Nations this week, then the climate crisis is “environmental Armageddon,” reports the UK’s Independent.
This dire pronouncement was made during a virtual meeting of the UN General Assembly in early October. And along with the risks associated with the coronavirus, world leaders also pointed to the increasing red alerts from nature. Even though the pandemic has forced countries to divert resources from other important issues – the Earth is still sick, and getting sickwer.
The pandemic has not put a halt to island nations from sinking or stopped the unrelenting drought is Africa and the Southwestern United States. “In another 75 years, many … members may no longer hold seats at the United Nations if the world continues on its present course,” the Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries Group said.
From a record Atlantic hurricane season to wildfires in the western part of the U.S to Siberian forests and their “zombie fires,” the list of climate catastrophe the past year is almost endless, and the year is not even over yet. To be sure – Even though COVID-19 is our immediate crisis, climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security, and well-being of the human population worldwide.
“Our global home that was teeming with millions of species of God-given creatures, both great and small, is slowly dying,” said Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, who last year noted that his country was the only one in Africa to reach the goal of making renewable energy 75% of its energy mix.
He added: “Our world is yearning for us to stop its ruin.”
