If We Can't Handle Covid, We'll Never Solve Climate Change. The Pandemic May Be Our Miners' Canary
What do Covid and the climate emergency have in common? They're both truly global in dimension and ultimately defy local fixes.
Yes, we in the developed world can vaccinate most of our people but that could still leave us vulnerable to the variant strains of the virus that may be vaccine resistant. It's a global pandemic that requires global solutions.
If we don't get this right it could backfire on our plans to curb climate change.
Progress on climate change could be scuppered by developing nations if they are not given equitable access to vaccines, Boris Johnson has been warned, as rich nations come under new pressure to donate more doses.
Figures compiled by the Observer show that the wealthiest nations, including the UK, have enough vaccines to inoculate their populations more than twice over.
Before a three-day G7 summit beginning in Cornwall on Friday, a growing number of influential figures believe failure to agree a vaccination plan for poorer countries could lead to them refusing, or being unable, to work with rich countries in the battle against the climate crisis.
...But as rich nations face accusations of stockpiling vaccines, Paul Polman, the former chief executive of Unilever and chair of the International Chamber of Commerce, said the two biggest global challenges were becoming increasingly, and dangerously, linked.
“We can’t have global solidarity and trust around tackling climate change if we do not show solidarity around vaccines,” Polman said. “Developing countries will not come with more ambitious targets [on emissions] if they do not see developed countries showing some solidarity on vaccines, and climate funding.”
“We can’t have global solidarity and trust around tackling climate change if we do not show solidarity around vaccines,” Polman said. “Developing countries will not come with more ambitious targets [on emissions] if they do not see developed countries showing some solidarity on vaccines, and climate funding.”
I agree with your point and see another problem that our amazing vaccine solution engenders.
ReplyDeleteWhile some poor countries can contain Covid-19 via public health etc., the rich essentially 'buy' their way out of a pandemic with a technological solution developed in record time.
Bad lesson.
Rather than causing a sense of urgency for fixing the myriad environmental crisis we've spawned, this will fuel the ' (black swan) technology will solve these problems' complacencies. We've seen exactly this point of view expressed in your comments section here recently.
Compared to mitigating climate change, the pandemic is a walk in the park.
As I've stressed so often, the solution to a myriad of our challenges lies in the simple notion of living within the finite limits of our one and only biosphere, Spaceship Earth.
DeleteOur planet is finite, a reality we have denied in growing our collective environmental footprint far beyond its limits. We either engineer a negotiated plan to return to a smaller presence - reduce population, slash consumption, eliminate emissions and pollution - or natural mechanisms will do it but not on our terms.
The biggest hurdle, and it may be insurmountable, is that all of the answers boil down to one thing - equity. Solutions have to be equitable. We can't expect the overpopulated nations to implement reproductive controls if we don't first agree to curb our first world consumption to see that every nation gets a more or less equal slice of a much smaller pie.
It's akin to an overloaded lifeboat on a storm tossed sea. The first thing is to lighten the load. Then you have to commit to a system of rationing so that everyone is treated equally. Can we find that sort of common sense altruism?
Compounding our predicament is that nations will experience different climate impacts arriving at different times. Central America offers an example. Due largely to climate change and consequent breakdown of civil society, many of ordinary citizens face food insecurity, the loss of employment and the ravages of severe storm events of increasing frequency, intensity and duration. For the most vulnerable, their ancestral homelands are or may soon become uninhabitable. What do we expect them to do, stand in place and watch their children die?
We, in what I call the "latitudinally advantaged" nations, a.k.a. the West, face less pressing threats such as sea level rise. Our societies are already depopulating, triggering a knee jerk political response - immigration - rather than consider no-growth alternatives. We won't escape the early onset impacts, especially across the American southwest, where heat and drought will hit hardest, but we'll feel enough that it may negate any willingness to accommodate Central American migration. We may be proclaiming "every man for himself" sooner than we imagine.
We know the challenges and we know the prescriptive solutions. Knowing and doing are different things.
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Thank you all for reading,
God bless"