Pandemics Don’t Matter Unless We Start Leaving Oil in the Ground
By: Joe Omundson
Tags: Society, Coronavirus, Climate Change, Health, Environment

All year the news has focused Covid-19. We’re consumed with it because it’s “the topic” this year.

We certainly need better ways to respond to global pandemics! It’s not a bad thing to think about.

But we are foolish if we let this issue distract us from the massive problem that is far more threatening to our entire species (and many others).

Scientists broadly agree: we need to reduce our carbon emissions by half in the next 10 years, and to zero by 2050, in order for climate change to be pretty bad instead of completely devastating. And that’s a conservative estimate.

A million dead from Covid is a serious concern.

You know what’s worse than a million people dying? Everyone dying.

That’s what we might be facing if we don’t get our shit together.

It might sound dramatic to say that climate change will lead to complete human extinction. Indeed, that’s on the extreme end of what’s expected to happen, but it’s not something we can rule out at this point. Our climate and ecosystems are highly complex and we can’t account for all the effects that will reveal themselves as we continue to attack our environment.

Coral reefs are already dying off en masse due to human impacts on climate and will probably disappear completely this century. Storms, droughts, and wildfires are already more severe. When I look out the window right now the air is filled with smoke from the largest wildfire season Oregon has ever experienced. Animal populations are already being devastated worldwide. A number of processes like thawing permafrost are set to ripple through Earth’s complex systems and may lead to unpredictable positive feedback loops.

We’re creating an increasingly chaotic future every day we continue to interact with our environment the way we have been.

Think 2020 has been a bummer? Are you disturbed by all the conflict and catastrophe in the world?

Imagine a world where hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people lose their homelands due to literally intolerable heat, rising oceans, droughts, famines, desertification, and extreme weather. They will have to find other countries to take them in. Degraded soils and collapsed insect populations will make agriculture difficult. Overfishing, along with bioaccumulation of microplastics and mercury, will make oceans useless as a food source.

How well do you think all of this will play out?

It’s going to be a hell of a lot worse than a coronavirus.

If the direct environmental effects aren’t enough to kill us off, international relations will become so strained that we’ll probably have to worry about a nuclear holocaust too.

If we don’t want to end up living in complete chaos, or even a fully inhospitable planet, we need to dramatically change our interaction with nature. Now.

This isn’t some religious panic, woo-woo Gaia nonsense, or conspiracy paranoia. It’s the consensus of the people who have spent the most time objectively studying the way our climate and ecosystems work.

If the life support system that supports our existence collapses, we will collapse too.

Every future generation (however many there are) will hate us for wrecking the most special situation in the known universe: the ability to have our biological needs effortlessly supported by the only habitable planet for light-years in any direction. It’s taken us billions of years to get here and we’re throwing it away.