In years to come we may rue allowing the Covid-19 pandemic to suck all the air out of the room. It's as though everything else that threatens humanity - on a scale dwarfing this pandemic to insignificance - was somehow put into suspension. From The Lancet.
We opened this year with the hope that 2020 could be a super year for the environment with major policy milestones on biological conservation and climate policy. Regrettably, much of that agenda has been blown out of the water by COVID-19. Media bandwidth has been almost entirely consumed by the pandemic, and its political and economic fallout.
...The human impact of climatic extremes is ...complicated and in general worsened by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of writing some 9·6 million people are swamped by monsoon floods in south Asia compounding the difficulties and human tragedy of COVID-19 in the region. As the season continues heat waves are likely to challenge pandemic prevention measures in many regions. In this issue Mahaveer Golechha and Rabindra Panigrahy outline some of the challenges extreme heat might pose to India’s COVID-19 countermeasures and how these might in turn impinge on heat action plans. Foreseeing similar challenges, the Global Heat Health Information Network have provided guidance designed to help administrators prepare for hot weather and heatwaves while managing COVID-19. The need for joined up policy has rarely been more apparent, but it will be challenging to deliver on short-timescales and in resource-constrained settings.
Living through a pandemic is complicating just about all of our societal problems and goals. Unfortunately, this additional drain on our resources and capacities changes little about the unfolding ecological and climate problems we face. The very real danger is that COVID-19 looms so large in our minds we miss the obvious writing on the wall about the other problems we must still address. Slipping progress, while very understandable is simply not a viable option, the climate will cut us no slack.
All true enough, but let us not forget or even acknowledge the advantages taken by all of the crisis.
ReplyDeleteI see many taking advantage of the governments,world wide, shovelling monies to special interest groups, business and the average taxpayer in what seems to be a much more than normal; I do not know what to do moment!
I know of business that are taking advantage of the situation, I know individuals taking advantage and even not for profit organisations that feel it's easier to lay off staff and accept government largess.
I have suspicion that there are many companies that were on the edge of failure making miraculous come back due to government bailouts.
We have possibly the biggest corporate bailout in history with many companies accepting Covid payments to already failing businesses.
Pre Covid we were living in a pre recession economy, a sham!
What a wonderful way out to use an epidemic to 'adjust' the economy!
TB
I expect the evidence of misappropriation/misapplication of government funds will emerge in due course.
ReplyDeleteThis post, however, considers how the pandemic has essentially derailed action on the climate emergency, the truly existential challenge of our day. Governments are defunding their treasuries and tapping out their lines of credit to keep the public, the private sector and the economy from collapse.
This diversion, while understandable, defers action on the climate emergency, wasting time we don't have, and may leave governments, at some point trying to bounce back from Covid-19 impacts, skint for funds to meet the challenges of climate breakdown.
Back in the last 'once in a century' Calgary flood, a professor emeritus in disaster engineering from McGill estimated Canada needs to spend upwards of a trillion dollars to replace, repair and rehabilitate our essential infrastructure to meet the challenges of this new climate. Sewers, water mains, roads, highways and overpasses, the electrical grid - everything without which our society cannot function.
Disasters that used to be measured in tens or hundreds of millions are now on a scale of tens or hundreds of billions. And this is atop the ordinary operating expenses of government.
FWIW.
ReplyDeleteThousands of Pakistanis employed by the world health organisation have been pulled from their jobs vaccinating against polio to educate and fight covid19.
It's easy to see where that will end!
TB
That's disheartening, TB. There are heavily-populated, low-lying countries, with inadequate water and sewage systems, the perfect breeding ground for polio. In such places, sea level rise can be the match to gasoline.
ReplyDelete