Climatologists (John Olson)
Paul Abela - Why Covid-19 Is Great for the Environment but Terrible for the Economy
Paul Abela, an editorial writer for A Medium Corporation, highlights the potential environmental impacts associated with Covid-19 and how the Federal Government's response to this global health crisis differs from their response, to climate change.<https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/why-corvid-19-is-great-for-the-environment-but-terrible-for-the-economy-13893af63943>
Analytical Essay: An Environmentalist's Perspective on Covid-19
The process of developing large scale economic alterations in order to adequately respond to global health catastrophes has been put into practice as a result of the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Having acted swiftly and quickly, government officials have implemented restrictions on business operations, transportation services, and non-essential services to minimize the spread of this deadly virus. However, despite the prioritization of saving lives in regards to this short-term threat, environmentalists, climatologists, and economists alike have come to recognize the discrepancies between the response to Covid-19 and the much more existential threat of climate change. According to Paul Abela, a environmental journalist for The Medium, “The reaction to Covid-19 highlights how quickly we can react and make changes when faced with a threat… Herein lies the ultimate problem with the climate crisis: It doesn’t evoke the same kind of urgency a deadly virus does,” (Abela, 2020). The urgency with which political institutions have been responding to this pandemic has caused climate experts to feel a sense of betrayal and frustration with the system’s lack of respect for the overwhelming volume of data that has been made available.This feeling of disregard is not new among those within the environmental field. Rather than focusing on prevention efforts, governments have relied solely on allocating resources and implementing legislation in order to fuel clean-up efforts associated with an environmental catastrophe that can be partially or completely attributed to climate change (such as that of Covid-19). Lydia Grossman, a graduate student in the International Affairs program at The University of Mary Washington, addresses government intervention in the Middle East and North Africa and the source that led to civil unrest within these regions. She highlights the perspectives held by various environmental economists regarding climate change’s role in sparking conflict due to longer dry seasons, extensive droughts, and diminished agricultural output - all stemming from increased temperatures. Most importantly, this journal provides the reader with insight into the main perspective that can be ascribed to the current Covid-19 situation: “Environmental degradation can also have a direct impact on the economic health of a country,which can also play a key role in political unrest. Many scholars argue that the consequences of climate change for political security depend more on the willingness and ability of governments to handle the social and financial burden of addressing environmental changes than the changes themselves,” (Grossman, 2017). Since Third World Nations - such as Middle Eastern and North American countries - emit insignificant amounts of greenhouse gases in comparison to industrialized, First World Nations, the effects that they are feeling in response to increased global temperatures comes from the inability of powerful, wealthy countries with abundant resources at their disposal to limit their carbon footprints. Due to the potential collapse of nations that reel from these economic/environmental impacts, nations, such as the United States, must get involved and spend funds to resolve the issues resulting from climate-based civil unrest. Our response to Covid-19, just like that of the response to the civil unrest experienced by Middle Eastern and North American Nations, can be thought of as a clean-up effort; an end-result stemming from the lack of government action and urgency to implement comprehensive climate change legislation that would essentially stop global warming in its tracks.
Although there is currently great frustration among environmental scientists all across the globe, there is one positive externality of the coronavirus pandemic that climatologists have identified - an overall halt to various forms of transportation that will end up minimizing the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere (Abela, 2020). Once the government reopens the economy, however, we will return to our previous ways of living that involve large-scale consumption of non-renewable resources that contribute greatly to global warming. During this health crisis, we are giving the Earth a chance to breathe and briefly recover from the stress that our system has put it under throughout the industrialized age. Many environmentalists are encouraged by this, but they also recognize that much more will need to be done in order to ensure our planet stays below the climate tipping-point threshold that, if crossed, would yield unprecedented global consequences.
The response of the Federal Government, as well as other state governments across the United States, towards the current global pandemic has infuriated many passionate climate scientists whose research has been essentially overlooked. Obviously, they are grateful that the institutions that have been put in place to service and protect are fulfilling their role in this time of great need; However, the fact that politicians have been adhering to the suggestions and guidance of public health officials throughout this crisis indicates that these same public servants are capable of acting in correspondence with climatologists’ warnings. This revealed sense of urgency among politicians towards Covid-19 has resulted in increased distrust towards public officials among environmentalists.