Covid-19: Dress Rehearsal for the Climate Crisis
This Is the Moment to Turn It Around.
The apocalyptic fever that COVID-19 has brought to our lives is just a glimpse of what climate change threatens.Immersed in the gravest health crisis of our lifetime, each day alarms us more. Many are preoccupied with the minute that we can rush back to life before COVID-19.
The central question in response to the virus is the very question central to the climate crisis. Can our culture choose health and well-being over maximizing profit? Public response to COVID-19 showed us the overwhelming answer is YES.
Despite being guided by an administration that is skeptical of science and hyper-focused on the economy, public opinion made clear that choosing health over the economy was the only option. Like the coronavirus, climate change will disrupt every part of our lives with an even greater relentlessness.
Yet, the devastation from the COVID-19 is a minor blip compared with climate destabilization. Already it threatens our food supply, fuels wildfires, raises ocean levels, increases extinction events, destroys habitats, causes deforestations, floods, and droughts. All of which have deadly consequences. If left unchecked it will spawn more diseases in plants, in animals, and in us.
In this scenario there would be no hope for a magical vaccine, only the bleak reality of what we have created. Amazon cannot deliver food to the door, if there is no food to deliver.