Covid-19 and Climate Change: What do they have in common and how do they differ? A matter of perception
By: Guilia Belotti
We find ourselves in unprecedented times, dealing with a threat that we do not fully understand. What is best for us? How do we protect ourselves and others? Who should we blame for the pandemic? We would like to find an answer to all these questions, but instead, we grope in the dark, looking for the right solution, waiting for this to end.
Since we realized the scope of the issue, there has been no room for anything else in our lives. Covid-19 is now part of our reality, of our daily routine. Italy, my country, has been on lockdown for more than 40 days. This means that we cannot leave our homes, if not for groceries or for urgent needs, like buying medicine or taking care of the elderly. Activities which we once defined as “normal” are not allowed anymore, or they have changed drastically. Other issues, which were once considered ‘vital’, were immediately down-scaled on the list of urgent matters and all the attention was solely given to the virus. Not only did Covid-19 change our ordinary, but it also modified our perceptions, becoming the most discussed topic on a daily basis. We open the newspaper, we turn the TV on and all highlights are about the virus and the various measures adopted by each government. The politicization of the issue is inevitable. Politicians collaborate, criticize each other, learn from other countries’ mistakes.
However, by being fully absorbed by our efforts to fight Covid-19, the risk is to forget about another huge threat, which is equally dangerous, but more subtle and harder to grasp: climate change.
In fact, the virus and climate change have more in common than we would expect at first glance.
Firstly, both of them are global emergencies. Today, more than any other time in human history, our world is incredibly interconnected, with people traveling around and crossing boundaries at an extremely high rate. Inevitably, it is easier than ever for a virus to spread fast and affect most countries. At the same time, climate change does not affect a specific location. On the contrary, it involves the planet as a whole. More specifically, some of the countries which were hit the hardest by climate change were not responsible for causing it.
Furthermore, in both cases, it is useless to try to find a response. As for the outbreak of the pandemic, blaming China will only create international turmoil and disorder. In the case of climate change, efforts to tackle it must come from each country, despite who started polluting. During UNFCCC negotiations, the issue of “historical responsibilities” has caused blockades and drawbacks, with developing countries blaming Annex I countries. In both cases, finding a “responsible” will not help to solve the crisis. Looking for a country or an institution to blame is inevitable, but it will realistically bring nothing to the table in terms of solutions.
Secondly, climate change and Covid-19 are characterized by high levels of uncertainty. In both cases, we find ourselves dealing with something new and unprecedented. There has not been a similar experience or event in the past, therefore we cannot learn from our mistakes, nor adopt a solution which had once been useful. Additionally, for both threats, we can only rely on predictions, which cannot be fully accurate. We predict, for example, a certain increase in global temperatures by a certain year, or we predict that the contagion curve will increase or decrease by a certain value. However, we can never be one hundred percent sure. Under these conditions, acting properly is even more complicated.
Lastly, climate change and Covid-19 are urgent threats. Their impact is devastating, both in terms of mortality rate and environmental change they cause. In fact, even though in two different ways, they require us to modify our habits and activities. For both issues, we can apply the concepts of adaptation and mitigation. Mitigation, applied to the virus, refers to lockdowns, wearing masks and gloves, practicing social distancing. It involves all the measures adopted in order to hamper the spread of the virus. As for climate change, mitigation defines all the initiatives – taken by governments, businesses, organizations, and individuals – in order to avoid further temperature increases. In terms of adaptation to Covid-19, more governments are starting to talk about the possibility of “living with the virus”, keeping people safe but, at the same time, starting over again, reopening activities, going outside. Adaptation to climate change means, similarly, living with its consequences, adopting new practices to survive its effects.
If the two global threats are so similar, why is there such a sharp difference in the way they were addressed?
Beverly Roach, from the University of Singapore, tells us that “we can compare it to the ‘boiling frog syndrome’. This is the urban legend describing a frog in water. If a frog is dropped into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out to save itself. But if the frog is put into warm water, with the temperature rising slowly, it will not notice the change and slowly boil to death”. The same can be stated for climate change and Covid-19. Climate change is happening at a slower pace and its effects are noticeable, but to a lower degree if compared to the pandemic. The virus is instead putting whole countries on their knees, challenging the health care system and slowing down the economy dramatically.
Both issues are equally fatal and urgent, but only one of the two is perceived as such.
Despite this dualistic view, which puts climate change and Covid-19 on the same level - with their differences and similarities- but as two completely separate matters, there is new evidence towards a collision of the two. According to a Harvard University study, Covid-19 and climate change – or, better to say, pollution - are more connected than expected. Some researchers from the Biostatistics Department found that an increase of only 1 μg/m3 in PM2.5 is associated with a 15% increase in the Covid-19 death rate, with a 95% confidence interval.
Could this connection represent an important step towards the adoption of stricter measures, both to prevent a new outbreak of the virus and to reduce pollution in our counties?
Coronavirus disease proved extremely effective in terms of biodiversity matters. In China, pangolins trade was put to an end, after they were thought to be responsible for being the source of the virus. On 24 February, China announced a ban on trading and eating many wild animals, while shutting down wild animal markets across the country.
This allows us to realize two different things. First, current global issues may be more correlated than we would first expect. This means that there might be a way to address them, if not as the same problem, at least by adopting measures which may benefit both. Second, it highlights the importance of tackling issues which, just like climate change, we do not perceive as ‘urgent’, but they will have dramatic effects on our lives.
These times of lockdown and self-isolation should be an excuse to stop as a global community and start thinking about where we want to go, what kind of future we want to pursue, what priorities we should have. Only by working together, we can build a better society and a better environment.
