Motivating Action on Climate Change: Five lessons from COVID-19

To respond to the challenge of our times we can draw on timeless advice

By Michael Raynor and Jason Girzadas

The human suffering of the COVID-19 pandemic has been evident from its earliest days. But it is only as we have had to cope with ongoing and global-scale disruptions to almost every dimension of our personal, social and economic lives that we have begun to appreciate what responding to this crisis can teach us about ourselves. Specifically, we have increasingly come to see that many of our assumptions about how the world “must” work were wrong. It turns out that constraints we thought were binding, and perhaps immutable, can be broken.

This matters a lot, because a long-simmering global problem threatens to become a defining challenge of our age: planetary-level climate change. At present, of course, containing COVID-19 and calibrating our efforts to keep the economy open against the risks of a resurgence necessarily command our attention. But sooner rather than later, we will need to devote at least an equal measure of our ingenuity and resources to confronting the impending climate crisis.

A first step is understanding the nature and magnitude of the consequences of inaction. Mainstream and credible scientific research concludes – to paraphrase its typically clinical prose – that rising levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) are likely to trigger a level mass extinctions that would threaten humanity’s survival as a species. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that to have even a 50% chance of avoiding some of the worst long-term impacts of climate change, we must reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions by 50 percent by 2030, and reach net-zero by 2050. Net zero at a planetary scale implies the decarbonization of the global economy.

It is difficult to imagine a more extreme claim: eventual mass extinction to be averted over the next thirty years via the wholesale reconstitution of human activity. Unfortunately, we have been conditioned to dismiss extreme claims simply because they are extreme: Chicken Little is never right, and truth always lies somewhere in the middle of a continuum defined by the full range of viewpoints.

This tilt for temperance has created a particularly vexing catch-22. The level of effort required to address climate change effectively will be enormous. Attempting to motivate that change by emphasizing the gravity of the situation triggers a defensive response: that can’t be true. Yet, a more reserved approach – say, one that focuses on the benefits of green energy – typically proves similarly ineffective: if it’s not that bad, why work so hard?

At the core of this reluctance to change is the tradeoff between economic growth and reducing carbon emissions: for now, it seems, we can’t have both, and we can’t have neither. Indeed, that COVID-19 lockdowns hobbled business activity of every sort even as they cleared the air in Delhi and the canals in Venice has reinforced that tension.

There is a more uplifting conclusion to be drawn, however. It’s said that we need to be reminded more often than we need to be instructed. The pandemic has reminded us that necessity is the mother of invention: what at first seems to be a painful and inescapable tradeoff is often the impetus needed to find the innovations that reveal still better outcomes. We see in our collective response to the COVID-19 crisis reminders of five additional basic truths, each of which points us toward embracing the increasingly connected imperatives of serving our economic well-being and our long-term survival. Perhaps we need not be overwhelmed by this most daunting challenge simply by heeding the most prosaic advice.

1.      An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

In dramatic fashion, we have seen that the “savings” associated with not adequately preparing for a pandemic are dwarfed by the costs of dealing with the fallout. The same holds for climate change: the near-term costs of decarbonizing the economy are likely to pale in comparison to the toll unchecked warming will exact.

And, as with COVID-19, past oversights do not preclude new insights. From large-scale tracking and tracing to the rapid development and testing of potential vaccines, what once seemed impossible now seems likely. Similarly, from large-scale carbon sequestration through rapid afforestation to dramatically reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, very often simply recognizing the need allows us to realize the solution.

And, as with COVID-19, there is a point where it really is too late. A virus that reaches a critical level of community spread simply cannot be contained. Similarly, natural systems can become irreversibly compromised. That point is likely far sooner than we’d like it to be.

2.      It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

It can seem at times almost politically and socially impossible to ask people to accept even minor inconveniences, let alone upend their lives, to embrace lower-carbon behaviors.

Yet responding to COVID-19 reminds us that we can be very adaptable. For example, at Deloitte, we have discovered, like so many other businesses, that we can effectively serve clients during this crisis without the intensity of travel that not six months ago was an inescapable element of our model. We can change more of our individual and collective behavior than we thought. Very little is truly off limits, and it’s worth questioning every assumption. Not that the change hasn’t imposed new costs – but new, significant benefits have emerged.

Similarly, what if the “range anxiety” that has limited the adoption of electric vehicles is actually overstated. EVs are not perfect substitutes for traditional automobiles, just as virtual work is qualitatively different from in-person interactions. But we may well be able to work around and adapt to those limitations more easily than we think – and we won’t discover that until we commit to the change, and trust in our newly-validated flexibility.

3.      I’ll believe it when I see it and I’ll see it when I believe it.

We’ve learned what society is willing to do when the stakes are high and clear for all to see. The global response by governments, businesses, and citizens to the COVID-19 pandemic makes it clear that we have a significant capacity for rapid collective action, even at great cost.

But what does it take to make something “clear” to “everyone”? It turns out that all too often we interpret new facts in ways that support existing beliefs. We like to think what matters most is the evidence, when in fact what often matters at least as much is what changing our minds might mean for our deeply-held convictions.

In the case of COVID-19 we were collectively willing to endure the burden of voluntary social isolation and “flatten the curve”. Certainly, the good science was crucial – but that’s never enough. Good science often comes with a serving of uncertainty, as we saw in the wide range of early estimates of infection and mortality rates. A consensus on the immediate actions to tackle the pandemic emerged because scientific facts rested on a bedrock of shared understanding about prioritizing human life.

 As with COVID-19, so with climate change: there is an overwhelming consensus of credible scientific bodies, but that won’t carry the day until the case for action turns on a collective commitment to our shared humanity. And as the sometimes rancorous debate over reopening the economy has illustrated, that sense of collective commitment can be fragile. So we need to be prepared to capitalize on moments of consensus, and to actively nurture those shared beliefs.

4.      Every cloud has a silver lining.

COVID-19 has brought deep suffering, a fact we cannot lose sight of. But for many, absent any direct impact from the disease itself, the “new normal” has not only turned out to be more tolerable than anticipated, but also to hold some surprising benefits. Some of us are reconnecting with family and friends, realizing that distance across states or countries is no greater impediment than across town. Some have taken up new hobbies or found new simplicity. The ability to work virtually with anyone, anytime, from the comfort of home has been eye-opening for many.

We may find the same to be true in a low-carbon economy. Traveling less, for work or leisure, reduces costs, frees our time, and could let us reconnect with our local communities. Electric heat pumps improve the quality of air in our homes. Climate-friendly diets can improve our health. Many find electric cars can be more fun to drive, and reviews suggest that they are, in important ways, often more mechanically reliable.

Addressing climate change is often framed around costs, pain, and dislocation—and surely there will be some. But it may be less than we expect. Entrepreneur and energy researcher Saul Griffith observes that with electrification and shifting to non-carbon fuel we could cut the total amount of energy we use in the United States in half “without changing the size of our homes, or our cars, or fundamentally changing the fabric of our lives.”

Where the pain is unevenly distributed, help must be offered. Just as governments and others are making efforts to aid those harmed by the economic fallout of coronavirus measures, so too should we support those who could suffer in the transition to a low-carbon economy—particularly those who had little role in creating the climate crisis in the first place, such as those living in developing nations.

5.      Money is a great servant but a bad master. 

The last several years have seen a growing movement to reimagine business’s role relative to the environment, society, and the broader economy. Witness the Business Round Table’s statement that the purpose of a corporation goes beyond just profitability and growth. A focus on stewardship makes each of us not merely owners, managers, or consumers, but also temporary caretakers of our organizations and our planet.

In dramatic fashion, the coronavirus has forced us to take this newly-important principle very seriously. As it became clear that “business as usual” posed a clear threat to our individual and collective health, the response was swift: we stopped doing business as usual. The cost in dollars was tolerable because the cost in lives was not.

The choice is no less stark when it comes to climate change. A global economy that over-heats the planet represents a threat to human health still more acute than COVID-19, even if the crisis plays out over years and decades rather than weeks and months.

It’s common to profess that money isn’t everything. Our collective response to the pandemic demonstrates that, in general, that belief is sincere. Although there is a needed debate about how to balance public health and economic activity, we have shown that we can have a purpose greater than mere profits.

Tackling climate change is no longer principally about technical advances, and is now just as much about the personal and systemic change required to deploy new technologies. Luckily, we are less constrained than we believed, and we can be both more flexible and more determined than we knew. Collective action can realize rapid, effective change on a planetary scale.

We conclude where we began, with another aphorism: think global, act local. COVID-19 has, almost at a stroke, shifted our sphere of concern, compassion, and cooperation – how we think -- from local to global. It has simultaneously, and as a consequence, changed the locus our creation and consumption of physical goods, and our sense of community – how we act – from global to local. Successfully combatting climate change requires precisely this same shift. Let us hope that, when the history of this time is written, it shows that what the pandemic forced upon us we were able to choose as our new way of life; for then, just maybe, we will have redeemed at least some of the suffering we have endured.

Learn more about Deloitte’s plans to mitigate the impacts of climate change through WorldClimate, our global strategy to drive responsible climate choices, including achieving net-zero emissions by 2030.