Workers, poorly equipped to handle COVID-19, will be even less well equipped to face climate… [+]
After describing the dead lying in the halls of Wuhan hospitals and the coffins stacking up on church pews, Donald G. McNeil Jr. remarked on the New York Times podcast The Daily:
“I’ve been looking at the [coronavirus] since late January, early February. I’m frightened by it. The visions are nightmarish. That’s what we’re headed for and I don’t see anyone taking it seriously.”
He was describing the inadequacy of the U.S. Federal government’s response to COVID-19, but he may just as well have been describing our cluelessness and lack of attention to the impending climate crisis, which will be far more devastating. Imagine the worst of COVID-19. Now magnify that by an order of magnitude.
COVID-19 is one virus. Just one. Climate change impacts will bring many new illnesses, as we have seen from the spread of the Zika virus. There are possibly viruses lying dormant in the melting permafrost, now. There will be existing illnesses related to water and air quality, land use and agriculture that are exacerbated by climate. There will be increased flooding, tornadoes and wildfires. We won’t have the luxury of dealing with them one at a time, since they are coming at us with a random and unpredictable speed and intensity.
Are our governments prepared?
Is there a plan in place?
Are our hospitals, fire departments and food supplies ready?
In the absence of planning, will the migrations of people with food insecurity overwhelm us?
Will we need to shut down the economy again to lower emissions quickly (as is happening now) to grapple with the chaos?
Should we simply be reactive and play whack-a-mole, as we are doing now with COVID-19?
Or should we face the scientific facts and prepare?
If we can prevent these things, shouldn’t we?
We have been hampered by several things. By nature, we are short-term thinkers and climate change is a very slow-moving problem. The global response to COVID-19 is aided by the fast pace of the contagion. The slow pace of climate change prevents us from swinging into action decisively. Regarding the spread of COVID-19, there is not a well-aligned, well-endowed group of corporations fighting and spending billions to try to raise the infection and death rate. There are not billions of dollars, over decades, being spent in government incentives to promote the spread of the disease and lower the cost of those efforts. Yet, in the war against climate change, the coalition of the fossil fuel interests has been aided for decades by government subsidies and well-funded lobbying efforts totaling billions of dollars.
Perhaps this pandemic can show us that we do not wish to be blindsided again by a far more devastating problem. Perhaps this will teach us that grassroots efforts alone, while powerful, cannot win this battle. Perhaps we will learn that a global consensus, backed by global commitments of government spending and planning, is absolutely necessary. Perhaps the American people will begin to see the value of an empowered federal government. Pandemics and climate change do not recognize state boundaries. Governor Cuomo is doing an impressive job, both in dealing with the coronavirus and in planning for climate change, but one state alone cannot be the solution. The role of the federal government is to protect us from these things. We need infrastructure. We need centralized, coherent planning, not reactive swatting as each whack-a-mole raises its head. Future iterations of, and additions to, the stimulus package and a new set of national mandates could address the issues outlined below on a Federal level. In so doing, billions will be saved in the avoided costs of responding in an ad hoc and undisciplined way, each time a new climate impact raises its mole-y head.
- Phase out fossil fuel cars by 2040, as in the UK, Germany, Norway, France and ten others.
- Require buildings to be energy efficient and fossil fuel free, as is being done in NYC.
- Require at least 80% generation of electricity by renewables (RPS) in every state by 2050.
- Provide worker training to replace lost jobs with healthy, well-paying jobs in the renewable or energy efficiency industries.
- Implement carbon tax and rebate program, as part of the stimulus, to tax fossil fuels and high CO2 emitters and place that money in the hands of average citizens.
- Government investment at today’s favorable interest rates in known low-risk technologies with high up-front costs, such as large-scale geothermal, new electrified public transit and new transmission.
- Government investment in carbon reducing innovation and R&D in storage, nuclear and next-generation clean energy technologies.
- Modify the investment tax credit (ITC) for renewables in light of the decrease in tax credit appetite.
As the coronavirus has shown, we are capable of joining forces against a common, invisible enemy. Hopefully, we have learned that preventative measures are better and less costly than reactive ones. We are learning how to join systemic solutions and grassroots efforts. While some would argue that this is the time to divert funds away from the climate problem, that kind of thinking would cripple us and eventually destroy us, leading us to a situation where our abilities to react are simply overwhelmed.
