We Pressed Pause. What’s Next?

Thoughts on flattening the curve for COVID-19 and climate change
April 6, 2020 │Steve Winkelman

BLOG 1. INTRODUCTION

This is the first in a series of blog posts exploring how lessons from the response to the coronavirus pandemic might help accelerate climate action. 1) We Pressed Pause. What’s Next? 2) Mobilizing against COVID-19 (by staying put), 3) Think Globally, Produce (& Reduce) Locally, 4) Prepare and Prevent, 5) Green Reboot?

Billions of people have just pressed pause on the global economy to protect millions of vulnerable people. Who would’ve thunk it? (Thank you to my wife, Cantor Heather Batchelor for this compassionate perspective.) While that’s certainly not the only way to look at the current global predicament, I find it to be true and inspiring. Certainly, all of us are trying to protect ourselves and families.

We’ve pressed pause. It feels like the planet is turning more slowly. The world feels smaller. We’ve taken a collective deep breath. The air is cleaner, there’s little noise from traffic. And we’re worried about loved ones. And we’re not sure how we will pay our bills.

We’re obsessively consuming news media. We’ve become sports junkies, tracking infection dashboards and comparing case counts (without considering wide variations in testing patterns and quality).

We wonder: How many of us are already infected but asymptomatic? Is this just round 1? Will we still be social distancing next year (perhaps intermittently)? Will the global recession last for years? When will we get back to semi-normal? What will the #NewAbnormal look like?

We don’t know what that the future holds.

One thing we do know is that global warming won’t stop on its own.

CONQUERING TWO INVISIBLE FOES
The dangerous coronavirus (0.1 microns) is about 300 times bigger than a CO2 molecule (3.3 angstrom). If you were a CO2 molecule the coronavirus would be One World Trade Center. In terms of short-term impact the coronavirus is punching above its weight. But over time climate change will be even more disruptive, destructive and devastating through impacts on health, infrastructure, supply chain and economy.

Much has been written in the past two months about the growing death toll from COVID-19, the tragedy of delayed and inadequate response, and the devastating economic disruptions to individuals, communities, governments and companies.  And even more has been written in the past two decades about the high opportunity costs of delayed and inadequate response to climate change.

Whether it takes 3 months or 18 months I expect and hope that most of us will go back to work, children will get back to school, health care workers can take a much-needed break, deferred treatments, maintenance, tasks and investments will resume. But it won’t be business as usual. And it musn’t.

What might we learn from the response to the coronavirus pandemic that can help us flatten the curve for the climate emergency?

In this blog series I share some thoughts on what’s changing, what we might learn from it and offer some initial ideas about moving forward.

1.  We Pressed Pause. What’s Next? [this post, keep reading below]
Introduction.

2. Mobilizing against COVID 19 (by staying put)
How has and will the coronavirus impact how we travel and where we live?

3.  Think Globally, Produce (& Reduce) Locally
Food security, supply chains, local manufacturing and residential energy resilience.

4.  Prepare and Prevent [in progress]
We need to reduce exposure to the virus and plan ahead for the next epidemic. And we need to both reduce GHGs (mitigation) and prepare for climate change adaptation (prevention) to stave off the worst impacts.

5.Green Reboot? [in progress]
We must “Ask the Climate Question” of the trillions of dollars in stimulus spending so that people, economies and the planet can recover and we don’t bake in future risks. We need shovel-ready, but not sand-bag ready investments. How can we foster the necessary social cohesion, political leadership and behaviour change to accelerate and scale up lasting and equitable change?

EARLY LESSONS
One thing we’ve learned is that major behaviour change is possible with a mix of government guidance, requirements and voluntary private decisions. Notably, social distancing has resulted in dramatically lower levels of travel, leading to significant short-term reductions in air pollution and CO2 emissions. But as Samantha Gross noted, coronavirus is really not the way you want to decrease emissions.

Remembering what is essential
We’ve all been reminded that our highest priority is taking care of ourselves and our family’s physical and emotional well-being.  We have been able to identify, and/or had defined for us, what are essential:

• Behaviors (hand washing, physical distancing)

• Personal relationships (household, neighbourhood, Zoom meetings?)

• Goods (food, soap, face masks, vitamin C)

• Expenditures (lodging, utilities)

• Trips (grocery, pharmacy)

• Attitudes (compassion, gratitude, patience, perspective)

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (from Simply Psychology)

And we have deeper appreciation of what our communities, economies and societies need to survive and thrive:

• Functioning institutions (hospitals, health departments)

• Reliable information: Trusted experts and information sources

• Equipment (PPE for medical workers)

• Systems and services (electricity, water, internet …)

• Safe and accessible public spaces.

INITIAL INSIGHTS

The coronavirus is personal. Climate change feels anonymous.

• Climate change is big. Planet sized. We’ve been hearing about it for decades. It makes us think of polar bears. Even if we understand the devastating and escalating impacts of climate change on heat waves, floods, extreme storms leading to injury, illness, death and property damage, climate change still feels Impersonal big, vague, long-term.

• The coronavirus is personal, immediate, focused. It directly enters our bodies. It can quickly kill our loved ones. It’s keeping us locked in our homes. It has our attention.

• “The Corona crisis is a 100-meter race and the climate crisis is a marathon. We have to run both at the same time” Victor Galaz (Stockholm Resilience Centre)

Act early (or pay the price later).

• The faster we act on COVID the fewer people will die (New York Times interactive model).

• We have 10 years to act to reduce the worst impacts of climate change. (IPCC)

• “A pandemic is like an oil tanker: It continues to move forward long after you hit the brakes.” Nicholas Kristoff (NYT).

• “Both the pandemic and the climate crisis are problems of exponential growth against a limited capacity to cope. … If you wait until you can see the impact, it is too late to stop it.” Elizabeth Sawin (Yale E360)

Listen to scientists!

• Scientific ignorance can be a potent disease vector (atmospheric scientist, Ben Santer in Scientific American).

• “So much of humanity still thinks about the climate crisis the way a spring-breaker thinks about coronavirus.” Bill Weir (CNN)

Trusted government leadership is key.

• “Voters reward politicians for fixing problems, but rarely for preventing them.” – Michelle Wucker (quoted by Beth Gardiner in Yale E360)

• But in the time of crisis politicians can get credit for setting the right tone, for trying hard, for communicating honestly, for listening to experts, for changing course when needed, for fostering unity. 95% of Quebecers approve of Premier Legault’s handling of the crisis. 87% of New Yorkers approve of Governor Cuomo’s handling of the crisis. 67% of Canadians support Prime Minister Trudeau’s handling of the crisis. 49% of Americans approve of President Trump’s response to the pandemic.

• Governments have access to a wide variety of tools to support and influence individuals and corporations (communication, support services, regulations, incentives, research, expenditures…). All of them are being tested now.

• We’ve seen a wide range of complacency/hesitancy/responsiveness, in/competence, stubbornness/adaptability from all levels of government in this fast moving crisis. Health policy experts will have a wealth of material to analyze as countries deploy varied strategies to flatten the curve and manage the recovery. We climate policy wonks will be watching closely to see what we can learn about best practices in inter-institutional coordination, public engagement, resource mobilization and preparedness planning.

The tragedy of the commons. The promise of community.

• Human societies have learned that contaminated drinking water and polluted air can make us sick and kill us. And we’ve learned that if no one is responsible for cleaning up we will all suffer. We’ve managed to greatly reduce pollution and save countless lives through better management, new technologies regulations, and financial incentives. But 7 million people still die each year from air pollution. And we haven’t figured out how to stop collective dumping of carbon into the atmosphere.

• The coronavirus has given us a visceral understanding of the importance of clean air in very localized settings (such as grocery store lines).  And social distancing seems to be informed both by self-protection as well as a sense of communal responsibility.

• The stress of physical isolation appears to be leading to more intentional outreach to friends, family and neighbours — whether by phone, video chat or 2-meter chats from porches and balconies.

• “The horror films got it wrong. Instead of turning us into flesh-eating zombies, the pandemic has turned millions of people into good neighbours.” George Monbiot (The Guardian).

• “The coronavirus needs to be addressed through personal isolation, while the climate needs to be tackled through coming together and collaborating.”  Christiana Figueres (Time)

We’re all in this together. The pen is in our hands.

• No one country, state or city can solve the pandemic or climate emergency on its own.

• Some more great points from Christiana Figueres:

  • “As a society, we’re only as safe as our most vulnerable people.”

  • “Social distancing measures have caused economic paralysis, while our response to climate change should actually strengthen and improve the economy.”

• “We might be living in a horror movie right now, but we are the ones writing the script, and we’re the ones who will decide how this movie will end.” (Mary Annaïse Heglar, quoted in Rolling Stone)

• “If we can tell that story of what we just went through and help people understand that this is an accelerated version of another story we’re going through that has the same plot structure but a different timeline, that could be transformative.” Prithwiraj Choudhury (Yale E360)

• “I hope our growing sense of urgency, of solidarity, of stubborn optimism and empowerment to take action, can be one thing that rises out of this terrible situation. Because while we will, eventually, return to normal after this pandemic, the climate that we know as normal is never coming back.” Christiana Figueres (Time)

• “Mother Earth can bounce back if we let her. And it shouldn’t take a global pandemic and recession first, just more smart science, more smart leadership and a sense that we’re all in this together. Something to think about the next time to wash your hands for 20 seconds to save people you will never meet — and life as we know it. Bill Weir (CNN) 

As always, I welcome your feedback and collaboration ideas.
Wishing you and yours physical and emotional resilience.

This is the first in a series of blog posts exploring how lessons from the response to the coronavirus pandemic might help accelerate climate action. 1) We Pressed Pause. What’s Next? 2) Mobilizing against COVID-19 (by staying put), 3) Think Globally, Produce (& Reduce ) Locally, 4) Prepare and Prevent, 5) Green Reboot?