The Climate Crisis Will Not Wait
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DOI: 10.1007/s10272-020-0934-9
Matilda Gettins
The Climate Crisis Will Not Wait COVID-19 has defined the year 2020. The pandemic has dominated headlines, created an economic shutdown and became political priority number one. Due to the intense focus on the pandemic, there has been less bandwith left over for the greatest existential threat of our time: the climate crisis. Despite the best attempts to argue that the coronavirus crisis has been advantageous for addressing climate issues, this is not the case. As media coverage shifted from the climate crisis to the pandemic, public scrutiny waned and governments reduced their already minimal efforts at climate policy. Economic stimulus packages were drafted and implemented – with more money flowing into fossil fuels than into renewable energies. The economic downturn, though reducing emissions temporarily, had strong adverse effects. Firms and investors are not keen to invest in times of crisis and those with plans to increase their sustainability were prevented by financial constraints. And the public, consumed with health, employment and educational worries among others, had little attention span for yet another disaster. The coronavirus taught us the urgency of a crisis The COVID-19 pandemic had disastrous effects around the entire world. However, the relative success or failure of various governments in their pandemic responses illustrates the crucial importance of taking early action in a crisis. On average, those countries that implemented preventative measures by reducing the risk of rapid exponential growth of COVID-19 infections in order to spare their health care systems from collapse fared better in terms of mortality as well as economic impact.
and hence increasing the rate of melting, is but one of many examples (Umweltbundesamt, 2008). To ensure that we do not reach the exponential domino effect caused by these tipping points – which would, amongst many disastrous consequences, increase the geographic range of malaria and other vector-borne diseases – we need to avoid reaching more than 1.5 degrees Celsius warming at all costs (IPCC, 2018). To do this, it is necessary to act now. We need to start by changing the rules. Many firms and countries continue to emit greenhouse gases at little or no cost. This market failure is disastrous in its consequences and should have been balanced out through public intervention long ago. In fact, the effects of not solving the greenhouse gas externality are detrimental in two additional aspects. Firstly, firms that emit greenhouse gases lack economic incentives to transition to clean energies while remaining profitable. If they do transition, it is usually out of corporate or executive values or public pressure. However, they find that this often leads to an economic disadvantage, essentially punishing them for making the responsible decision. In addition, those firms that cannot afford these additional costs are wholly unable to transition to clean energies. Secondly, the same theory applies to individuals. If there are n
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