The Covid 19 global pandemic has had two BIG consequences for climate deniers and one for the ‘economy’. It is an ongoing experiment in real time that proves two of the BIG LIES climate change deniers tout are not so, and that there are other changes we need to examine.
Big Lie Number One: The earth is too big for anything man does to seriously affect it.
The global shutdown of manufacturing, travel, and other human activities is providing dramatic proof of how our normal daily activities are bad for the planet and us. Air quality in Paris improved significantly. Northern India has regained views of the Himalayas a hundred miles away. Los Angeles is seeing a dramatic reduction in smog. While dolphins have sported in the canals of Venice, Italy as initially claimed, the big reduction in boat traffic and cruise ships has made a visible difference for both humans and animals. Variations on the story are happening around the world as wildlife takes advantage of human absence. Two thirds of the world’s passenger aircraft are sitting on the ground. Even without the reduction in emissions that has produced, the reduction in noise pollution has to be making a difference as well. (Margaret Renki has a commentary on what we are seeing now that we’ve gotten a little breathing space.)
Removing humans from the picture does make a difference to the planet.
Big Lie Number Two: The problem is so big nothing humans can do will make a difference.
As the above observations show, human actions on a large enough scale can have an almost immediate effect — especially against the time scale on which climate change is happening. This may be a side effect of the pandemic, but it’s dramatic proof that what we are seeing from taking emergency steps is something we could and should choose to do in a more determined way. It's showing that global action can make a difference - and that we need to make it routine, not something compelled by circumstances.
To be sure, what we are seeing are short response time effects. The benefits will multiply over the longer term. For example, clearer air doesn't just mean better views. It also means a long term reduction in respiratory diseases that could save millions of dollars and improve quality of life for everyone.
We’re seeing what we can get from forced change. What could we gain from doing this deliberately and for the long term?
#3 About that Economy We’re trying to restore…
It sucks. Bigly. Even when things are running ‘normally’, too many people are one paycheck away from losing everything. Too many people still don't have adequate healthcare. The social safety net has too many holes. The elderly, the poor, minorities, the handicapped, the sick… all of them are served badly if at all. The only ones doing just fine are the rich and the giant corporations, and their profits are killing the planet — and us.
The shortcomings of the way the economy works have been laid bare by the stress from the pandemic. It can be considered a stress test for the global economy and the problem of climate change disruption*, which is on a vaster scale and of longer duration. The test results are alarming. What we are seeing is an object lesson in how we’ve normalized structural problems into invisibility and based our policies on flawed assumptions. It’s taken the pandemic to force them into our attention.
Why the hell are we in such a hurry to restore something that was working so badly even before the virus? We know it can’t handle what’s coming as the climate continues to deteriorate. We are throwing huge sums of money at what are band aid solutions to big problems. Observations One and Two demonstrate what we have to gain and that we can do it; Observation 3 should be a huge incentive to make fixing that part of the overall solution — because it’s the root of the problem.
Robert Reich connects some dots and provides some suggestions.
To do anything else would be perverse and beyond perverse.