🧗 Collective Action for Exponential Threats

COVID and climate change aren't the same, but there are parallels

I’m excited to share a video I made with the Avo Media team, in partnership with The Tyee. We started with the realization that in a pandemic, everyone is weighing ethical decisions every day. Those decisions affect the wellbeing of our community. That led us to ask if we’re perceiving the risks properly and what factors we should all be taking into account.

This is the first in a series of six videos so I’m excited to share the rest with you in the upcoming weeks!

One of the experts we interviewed, Paul Slovic, co-wrote an article for Politico, expanding on the risks of misjudging exponential growth. Specifically, drawing parallels to the perception of climate change.

“As with the coronavirus, we need to anticipate the climate crisis and act quickly and aggressively to minimize further damages before they overwhelm us.”

- Howard Kunreuther and Paul Slovic, Politico

I’m hugely encouraged by the response to COVID around the world. Policymakers have listened to scientists, and the public has largely deemed the consequences of inaction to be unacceptable. Together we have made changes on a mass scale to stop the spread of the virus. Often that has come at the expense of our short-term economic interests, but that’s a tradeoff most people are willing to make.

The same hasn’t been true for the climate crisis. As the famous “hockey stick” graph told us over 20 years ago, we’ve already seen the exponential growth of climate change. The article above points out that we're seeing the rapid acceleration of economic impacts as well. And yet we haven’t taken large-scale actions to counter rising greenhouse gas levels.

There are a lot of comparisons between COVID and climate change floating around the internet and I do think we need to proceed with caution. No, the virus isn’t some sort of “immune response” from the planet. No, I don’t think it’s fair to be celebrating short-term reductions in emissions due to a pandemic.

But there are parallels. Michael Mann, the scientist most often associated with that hockey stick graph, co-wrote a Newsweek article laying out many of them. He likens COVID to watching a “time-lapse” of climate change.

“As with climate change, understanding the difference between recommendations based on good science and reckless opining or misinforming is critical, and as with climate change, taking appropriate action now will pay future dividends”

- Lawrence Torcello and Michael Mann, Newsweek

Perhaps living through that time-lapse will teach us that we have the ability to take globally coordinated action to tackle massive challenges. Maybe once we beat COVID, we’ll finally be ready to seriously take on the climate crisis. Or better yet, let’s start on both right now.