How Covid Tells Us to Fight Climate Change

10 Shah. 11 Julie Turkewitz and Manuela Andreoni, “The Amazon, Giver of Life, Unleashes the Pandemic,” The New York Times, July 25, 2020, accessed March 16, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2020/07/25/world/americas/coronavirusbrazil-amazon.html.

12 Manuela Andreoni, Ernesto Londoño, and Letícia Casado, “Brazil Health Workers May Have Spread Coronavirus to Indigenous People,” The New York Times, July 28, 2020, accessed March 16, 2021, https:// www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/world/americas/ coronavirus-brazil-indigenous.html. 13 Turkewitz and Andreoni.

14 Andreoni, Londoño, and Casado. 15 Shah. 16 Ibid.

17 Turkewitz and Andreoni.

18 Shah. 19 Turkewitz and Andreoni. 20 Shah.

By Daniel Bernstein

For years, health experts warned about the possibility of a pandemic that the world would not be prepared to handle. Since a viral outbreak seemed impossible to most, these scientists were not given attention.1 Had everyone known for certain of the terrors that Covid would bring, each country could have mobilized earlier to prevent death and chaos. The world faces this exact situation with climate change today; scientists warn of the terrible consequences climate change will bring in the coming decades. Despite these daunting predictions, relatively little is done to combat it. The Covid-19 pandemic must act as a warning sign for what can happen if the climate crisis is neglected any longer. Just as Covid especially hurt countries with ill-equipped health care systems, climate change will affect vulnerable populations most. While no country was adequately prepared to handle the spike of Covid cases, some were disadvantaged more than others. Mexico, for example, saw a startling 9.0% mortality rate for those infected, as opposed to 1.8% for the United States.2 These numbers reflect Mexico’s impoverished public health system, which struggled to get ventilators and staff hospitals.3 Similarly, warming and other effects of climate change will hurt poorer countries the most. Average temperatures will increase more near the tropics, which are made up by some of the world’s least developed countries. Countries such as Zimbabwe and Guatemala, with GDPs per capita less than a 20th of the United States’, will become 15% hotter on average by 2100 if trends continue.4 This prediction poses catastrophic expectations for these populations made up of subsistence farmers, for whom droughts will become exponentially more common, and coastal residents, who will experience more frequent and damaging hurricanes. While scientists struggle to make specific predictions for decades in the future, there is a general consensus in the scientific community that warming will dangerously exacerbate these areas’ weather related issues.5 These countries will pay the price for climate

change despite contributing the least to the problem. Covid and climate change have also shown that individual responsibility is key to addressing serious issues, but that government action is equally important, if not more lasting. Pandemics are challenging threats because they require each individual to act responsibly. Lockdowns would have been the ultimate mitigators for the virus had people followed the guidelines. As much as everyone wants to believe that the general public can band together to solve a common threat, the pandemic has shown that that is not realistic in every country. While bottom-up action certainly has a part to play in climate reform, such as the growing demand for vegan food and eco-friendly products, it will not be enough on its own. Luckily, the world can solve climate change on a bigger scale. Government regulations like the Biden administration’s goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 or the Paris Climate Agreement’s vision of international climate aid and accountability are achievable because governments can more easily enforce executive decisions than people’s behavior.6 Likewise, research to create environmentally friendly alternatives to energy and material production can be funded and carried out by a few donors and scientists.7 These avenues only require people to vote in climate-conscious leaders who can spend their time addressing the problem. With Covid lockdowns, countries rely on each person taking action, but with climate change, the world must depend on a top-down approach. Just as the world took difficult but necessary social distancing precautions to prevent Covid complications, climate change will require drastic changes to avoid equally disastrous consequences. As of March 2021, there have been over 125,000,000 cases of the virus and 2,750,000 deaths because of it.8 Staggering statistics like these are what drive the world to make alterations to everyday lives. This idea can set a precedent for the world, preparing people to make sacrifices for common safety. The effects of climate change are harder to quantify because of its indirect effects, but its outcomes look just as grim. If left unaddressed, current rates of carbon entering the ocean and increasing temperatures will kill coral reefs in just 20 years, which over a billion people worldwide rely on for food. Select areas of the world, like the Persian Gulf and China, will experience unbearable hot seasons, which will significantly raise the rates of dehydration and heatstroke for the hundreds of millions of people who live there.9 By 2100, rising sea levels have the potential to displace 2 billion people, creating an international climate refugee crisis.10 Educating people about these statistics will make change seem more necessary, just like how Covid numbers influenced large-scale action. People have done incredible things to mitigate the Covid outbreak, which shows that immense change is also possible to combat global warming. The world knows what it is up against with climate change, which puts it at an advantage. Now, the only thing left is to rally support for comparable action. Using what was learned from the pandemic response, the world has an incredible opportunity to prevent another global catastrophe.