Two Immediate and Existential Threats to Life: Global Warming and COVID-19

“To understand the kind of damage that climate change will inflict, look at COVID-19 and spread the pain out over a much longer period.” 

A timely reminder from @Bill Gates that the world is not dealing with one crisis but two. While focusing on one, we cannot lose sight of the other. Corona might seem more immediate to us now but climate damage, for that is what it is, has potentially the capacity for inflicting immeasurably worse consequences on all of us. And I say this with my thoughts going out to anyone who has lost a relative or a friend through the virus or is struggling to protect their livelihoods, businesses or families.

This is the main difference between the two crises: COVID-19 is local news everywhere and its impact is visible to us all, daily, everywhere. There is practically no community on Earth that has not been tragically affected by the virus and it is right that the international scientific community focus on taming this killer.

Climate damage, on the other hand, impacts communities sporadically, bushfires in Australia and Western USA for example. Or wildlife in remote places such as the arctic. Life for most of us remains as it ever was, although even in Germany winters are now markedly milder and summers drier, and for Australian and Californians soon returns to normal. Global damage is more abstract for many people. But it is a progression and life for all of us will be significantly disrupted sooner rather than later.

The similarity between Corona and climate damage is of course that they impact all of us and neither problem will be solved for any of us until it is solved for everyone. The impact of both is usually harder on societies less well-off too. Given this, and the possibly Armageddon that might be the result of a planet too hot for life, we cannot afford to ignore this issue and focus on COVID-19.

While we search for a long-term solution to COVID-19, tackling global warming can start today. It is not the root problem. It is a by-product of the way we live. The way we live is the problem. Simply put, the way we live is unsustainable, it cannot support over seven billion people on one planet in its current form. 

Unfortunately, solutions will be incremental and success reversing the damage will not be visible immediately but long-term, over generations. Our children know this and this is why it is they who are focusing the attention of the adult world on the serious situation that is unfolding. They simply have more skin in the game and are desperate to be heard. The unsustainability of our current lifestyles and the possibly irrevocable damage to our environment caused by global warming will impact future generations more than today’s political, industrial and economic leaders.