1Why don’t we treat the climate crisis with the same

2urgency as coronavirus?
3Owen Jones

4No Cobra meetings, no sombre speeches from No 10, yet the consequences of
5runaway global heating are catastrophic

6It is a global emergency that has already killed on a mass scale and
7threatens to send millions more to early graves. As its effects spread, it could
8destabilise entire economies and overwhelm poorer countries lacking
9resources and infrastructure. But this is the climate crisis, not the
10coronavirus. Governments are not assembling emergency national plans and
11you’re not getting push notifications transmitted to your phone breathlessly
12alerting you to dramatic twists and developments from South Korea to Italy.

13More than 3,000 people have succumbed to coronavirus yet, according to

14the World Health Organization, air pollution alone – just one aspect of our
15central planetary crisis – kills seven million people every year. There have
16been no Cobra meetings for the climate crisis, no sombre prime ministerial
17statements detailing the emergency action being taken to reassure the
18public. In time, we’ll overcome any coronavirus pandemic. With the climate
19crisis, we are already out of time, and are now left mitigating the inevitably
20disastrous consequences hurtling towards us.#

21While coronavirus is understandably treated as an imminent danger, the climate crisis is

22still presented as an abstraction whose consequences are decades away. Unlike an
23illness, it is harder to visualise how climate breakdown will affect us each as individuals.
24Perhaps when unprecedented wildfires engulfed parts of the Arctic last summer
25there could have been an urgent conversation about how the climate crisis was fuelling
26extreme weather, yet there wasn’t. In 2018, more than 60 million people suffered the
27consequences of extreme weather and climate change, including more than 1,600 who
28perished in Europe, Japan and the US because of heatwaves and wildfires.
29Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe were devastated by cyclone Idai, while
30hurricanes Florence and Michael inflicted $24bn (£18.7bn) worth of damage on
31the US economy, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

32As the recent Yorkshire floods illustrate, extreme weather – with its terrible human and
33economic costs – is ever more a fact of British life. Antarctic ice is melting more than
34six times faster than it was four decades ago and Greenland’s ice sheet four times
35faster than previously thought. According to the UN, we have 10 years to prevent a
361.5C rise above pre-industrial temperature but, whatever happens, we will suffer.

37Pandemics and the climate crisis may go hand in hand, too: research
38suggests that changing weather patterns may drive species to higher
39altitudes, potentially putting them in contact with diseases for which they
40have little immunity. “It’s strange when people see the climate crisis as
41being in the future, compared to coronavirus, which we’re facing now,” says
42Friends of the Earth’s co-executive director, Miriam Turner. “It might be
43something that feels far away when sitting in an office in central London, but

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44the emergency footing of the climate crisis is being felt by hundreds of
45millions already.”

46Imagine, then, that we felt the same sense of emergency about the climate
47crisis as we do about coronavirus. What action would we take? As the New
48Economic Foundation’s Alfie Stirling points out, a strict demarcation between
49the two crises in unwise. After all, coronavirus may trigger a global
50slowdown: the economic measures in response to this should be linked to
51solving the climate crisis. “What tends to happen in a recession is policy-
52makers panic about what the low-lying fruits are; it’s all supply chains and
53sticking plasters,” he tells me. During the 2008 crash, for example, there was
54an immediate cut in VAT and interest rates, but investment spending wasn’t
55hiked fast enough, and was then slashed in the name of austerity. According
56to NEF research, if the coalition government had funded additional zero-
57carbon infrastructure, it would not only have boosted the economy but could
58have reduced residential emissions by 30%. This time round, there’s little
59room to cut already low interest rates or boost quantitative easing; green
60fiscal policy must be the priority.

61What would be mentioned in that solemn prime ministerial speech on the

62steps of No 10, broadcast live across TV networks? All homes and businesses
63would be insulated, creating jobs, cutting fuel poverty and reducing
64emissions. Electric car charging points would be installed across the country.
65Britain currently lacks the skills to transform the nation’s infrastructure, for
66example replacing fuel pumps, says Stirling: an emergency training
67programme to train the workforce would be announced.

68A frequent flyer levy for regular, overwhelmingly affluent air passengers
69would be introduced. As Turner says, all government policies will now be
70seen through the prism of coronavirus. A similar climate lens should be
71applied, and permanently.

72This would only be the start. Friends of the Earth calls for free bus travel for
73the under-30s, combined with urgent investment in the bus network.
74Renewable energy would be doubled, again producing new jobs, clean
75energy, and reducing deadly air pollution. The government would end all
76investments of taxpayers’ money in fossil fuel infrastructure and launch a
77new tree-planting programme to double the size of forests in Britain, one of
78Europe’s least densely forested nations.

79There is a key difference between coronavirus and climate crisis, of course,

80and it is shame. “We didn’t know coronavirus was coming,” says Stirling.
81“We’ve known the climate crisis was on the cards for 30 or 40 years.” And
82yet – despite being inadequately prepared because of an underfunded,
83under-resourced NHS – the government can swiftly announce an emergency
84pandemic plan.

85Coronavirus poses many challenges and threats, but few opportunities. A

86judicious response to global heating would provide affordable transport, well-
87insulated homes, skilled green jobs and clean air. Urgent action to prevent a

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88pandemic is of course necessary and pressing. But the climate crisis
89represents a far graver and deadlier existential threat, and yet the same
90sense of urgency is absent. Coronavirus shows it can be done – but it needs
91determination and willpower, which, when it comes to the future of our
92planet, are desperately lacking.

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