The coronavirus and climate change
By: Christian Wayne Yonkers
Tags: Coronavirus, Environment, Climate Science, Covid 19, Climate Change

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Last week, my soon-to-be brother-in-law casually mentioned he’d never thought history would be made in his lifetime. Starting mid-March, it became clear it would.

Welcome to the Fury Road of the coronavirus. The web is replete with the latest statistics, trends, and news, so I’ll forgo the futile attempt to reiterate the scope of this pandemic. And let’s face it: it’s hit everyone. You, me, our neighborhoods and cities. We understand all too well how this affecting us. And it’s absolutely unprecedented in modern times. There’s no road map, no signs, no rosy welcome banners.

That is, unless we make them ourselves.

We can make the lessons of coronavirus extend post-outbreak, and we can utilize them to combat a threat far, far more dangerous than COVID-19: climate change.

In short, the coronavirus is exposing the underbelly of society. The current outbreak is a global object lesson on resiliency. It’s showing where we’re doing things right and, more sobering, what we’re doing wrong. It exacerbates the brokenness of our supply chains, procurement systems, and economy. It painfully reveals the inadequacy of our emergency response protocols.

But there’s a silver lining: If we can radically and rapidly alter our lives to avert the threat of a virus, we can do it for climate change.

This virus presents us an unprecedented opportunity for self-reflection. There’s no way we can emerge from this unchanged. I believe our current situation illuminates the broken nature of our human world. More importantly, it is providing invaluable insights that we can use to tackle climate change.

The coronavirus has proven that individuals, corporations, and governments can take radical action from the advice of scientists to avert catastrophe. The kicker will be if they’re able to do it for a far greater, albeit less perceivable threat of climate change. The response to the coronavirus has proven that radical steps to avert disaster are not only possible, but they work.

I tip my hat to the immeasurable kindness and sacrifice my fellow humans have exhibited to each other. From homemade face masks and videos that make us laugh to an ill Italian priest who died after giving his ventilator to a victim beside him. From the start, if we don’t craft solutions with compassion and love at their core, we might as well toss it.

The coronavirus provides an unprecedented opportunity to see our world as it could be, healing from human desecration and selfishness. In just a few short weeks, we have become undone. But we have also seen a complete redoing.

This past week, I’m noticing things that I never knew existed. The skies above my rural Michigan are free of jet trails. Road noise has virtually ceased from the nearby highway. The stars are illuminated in unparalleled glory because they aren’t competing with light pollution. The experience of those on the fringes are even more compelling. Take the account of Pankaj Gautam, a resident of Phagwara, India, who spoke to the Times of India about seeing the distant mountains for the first time thanks to the dramatically improved air quality:

“Nature heals itself so fast. We saw two firsts in our life today: One, the Dhauladhar range from Phagwara; and two, arrival of peacocks in the park just outside our residence.”

I guess I’ve acquiesced to the modern reality of progress invading every crevice of my consciousness, from the skies above to the soil I trod. All environments across the planet are going through a stage of healing. Consider these real-life examples of environmental healing brought on by the coronavirus:

Cities in India are experiencing dramatic decreases in air pollution as traffic, construction, and industry slow to a crawl.

In Delhi, air quality indexes have dipped to 38 , as good as any good day for the rest of the world, as opposed to the usual 150.

Cities 100 miles from the Himalayas can now see the mountains for the first time in decades.

Nitrogen dioxide has dropped 60% in Great Britain.

The notoriously polluted air of Los Angeles is now among the cleanest in the nation .

Reduced ambient road and industry noise is allowing scientists to detect minute seismic waves previously undetectable.

Pretty spectacular stuff. But as the world heals faster than any could imagine, people continue to contract the virus and die. The means of the healing are not the way we want to build sustainability: It comes at an astronomical human and economic cost, particularly for the most vulnerable. As environmental author, Bill McKibben, says in The New Yorker,

“[C]ompletely apart from the human toll, economic disruption is not a politically viable way to deal with global warming in the long term, and it also undercuts the engines of innovation that bring us, say, cheap solar panels.”

We need a wake up call, yes, but we also need a production system capable of producing technology and capital necessary to undo climate change. The virus’ halt of polluting activities shows us that the planet has an incredible ability to heal itself sans human intervention. Check. The next box to check-off is how to harness this regenerative miracle, expound on it to reverse climate change, and avoid a global pandemic in the process.

It’s a lot tougher than it sounds. Why? Because I’m cynical in the nature of human institutions and, if I’m honest, myself.

As a dog returns to its vomit …

As terrible a tragedy as this is, I fear it won’t last long enough to shake people to their very cores about what’s wrong with our institutions. I’m specifically alluding to our insatiable urge to accumulate wealth regardless of human or environmental cost. The economy tops the list of reasons to mitigate the virus as soon as possible. Nations are choosing not to social distance for fear of harming the economy. But the real problem isn’t a down-and-out economy; it’s the economy itself.

COVID-19 has given the world market a swift kick to the balls. But instead of taking pause to consider the frail and exploitative nature of our economic systems, we’re scrambling to give it a shot-in-the-arm in efforts to restore positive market futures as quickly as possible.

I find myself oscillating between hope and cynicism. I’m hopeful due to the unprecedented nature of this pandemic to bring the entire world to its knees. I by no means seek to trivialize the suffering caused by this virus, but do want to be honest in drawing parallels. Environmentalists, lobbyists, and human rights advocates have long toiled to change the economic system by fighting it at its own game. Largely, they failed. But this virus has bypassed traditional systems-change theory, kicking the feet from beneath the most basic economic unit: People.

When humans can’t work or mingle, capitalism grinds to a halt. It has loosened its iron grip on the planet. It’s like the planet is breathing deeply after bearing a weight imposed against her will.

But I fear of humanity’s inability, or unwillingness, to make the connection between the self-sacrificial measures taken in COVID-19 and those we must be taking now to address climate change. People are working around the clock to inflate the crippled economy, irregardless of the dead canary in the mine.

But I can’t implicate the world if I don’t implicate myself. Despite growing conviction, I can’t quell the urge to get out and waste time being “productive.” I fear loathsomely just being still until prompted to do something life-giving, regardless of its economic value.

It’s easy to point a finger of condemnation on something external, be it capitalism, or one extreme of the political spectrum. But perhaps the issue is in all of us. I can clarion the worst of capitalism, progress, globalism, what have you, but not until I call out the same germ in me. I share the same delirious, insatiable urge to gather, squander, and hoard. It’s the same disease driving nations to ignore their at-risk citizenry and the oozing wounds of a sick planet to prop up the economy for just a little longer.

I am convinced that saving the planet requires a sudden jolt to awaken the collective consciousness. Is this it? It’s too early to say. But if this isn’t the silver bullet for climate change, what will it take for us to realize we are frogs in a slowly warming pot?

Sooooo … capitalism is the problem?

Not exactly. Perhaps it’s premature to drop the ax on capitalism. After all, if we do, I wager we’ll inadvertently off a few pieces of our own nature that makes us human, for better or worse.

The Sunday school answer is we live in an imperfect world brimming with imperfect systems, governments, and solutions. But Sunday school answers mean squat if they don’t touch the other six days of the week. In an imperfect world, we work diligently with the best tools and opportunities afforded us. It means the tireless work of environmentalists and lobbyists pre-COVID-19 was not in vain. It means that, prior to the outbreak, the best tools to fight injustice may have been engaging the old system. Post-coronavirus, if capitalism remains the world’s salient means of producing and redistributing wealth, we’d be remiss to villainize it on principal and not engage it. Our efforts will be far more effective harnessing the economy of scale afforded by world markets than waiting for them to burn.

That is not to ignore the fact that capitalism, in principal, is all about accruing more and more wealth. But that’s capitalism unchecked, and there’s no way capitalism won’t get out of this unscathed. The kicker will be how we reshape capitalism, using it as a tool to serve people and the planet. Consider this: Markets are driven by people, and the collective consciousness of market constituents can have profound affects well after the events that shape them. Just look at the thriftiness of our grandparents, a vestigial habit ingrained from the Great Depression that lasted the duration of their lives.

If something hits hard enough, it will change how humans do business. If capitalism survives COVID-19, it must emerge with an indelible shift in collective consciousness leading the world to take better care of their neighbors and the planet.

We can fix the economy and prevent people from dying, we’ll just have to accept that the economy will be vastly different. Going “back to work” is not going to fix this (people will die and the economy will not rebound), but adapting the economy to honestly address the new reality will.

As we adapt and mitigate, it will be less painful, more sustainable, and more equitable to foster critical and compassionate self-reflection resulting in organic change than dropping a sledgehammer of good intentions on the heads of an unwilling and unknowing majority.