While some people may say that the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing climate change off the front page, we see more similarities than dissimilarities.
Both transcend ideology in testing the competence of governments in dealing with longer-term risks. Both involve the short-term investment, longer-term problem of paying a small sum now to prevent harm, versus larger remediation costs in the future.
With COVID-19, early investments in pandemic control and prevention mirror the difference between mitigation versus adaptation strategies in climate change.
Both present economies with different choices because limited resources force difficult calculations.
The economic impacts of both the pandemic and climate change will be very large. Notwithstanding trade tensions between the United States and China, the world has awakened from a period of relatively calm international economic developments into a more chaotic situation, which pressures them to make decisions targeted at saving lives immediately.
But the impact of COVID-19 is likely to be just a fraction of climate change’s anticipated devastation.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that the world is likely to warm by 1.5 deg C between 2030 and 2052, if global emissions continue to increase at the current rate.
This will induce impacts such as sea level rise, and endanger biodiversity and ecosystems.
For humans, this would mean increased climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security and economic growth.
The narratives of climate change and the pandemic are similar in that they are both linked to rapid change. Despite the similarities, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic have been framed differently by the media.
Climate change impacts are often portrayed as something which will happen in the future, or near future, while the threat posed by COVID-19 is portrayed as urgent and deadly.
But we need to understand that this pandemic is just a preview for the impacts of climate change.
Read more here.
Source: The Straits Times, 2 May 2020