More Great Writing on Covid and Climate
We weren’t originally planning on updating our first blog post with new articles, but these excellent pieces caught our attention and we wanted to share them with you all.
Covid holds serious dangers and opportunities for progress on climate.
What the Coronavirus Means for Climate Change — The New York Times
“Perhaps the real question is not whether the virus is “good” or “bad” for climate, or whether rich people will take fewer airplane flights, but whether we can create a functioning economy that supports people without threatening life on Earth, including our own.”
The two crises are conceptually hard to grasp in similar ways.
What the Coronavirus Curve Teaches Us About Climate Change — POLITICO
“The human mind does not easily grasp the explosive nature of exponential growth.”
Both Covid and the climate crisis impose severe emotional tolls.
What Climate Grief Taught Me About the Coronavirus — The New Republic
“My climate grief and my grief about the coronavirus pandemic feel devastatingly similar. Both crises represent tectonic shifts in the way the world works….Both force me to accept the end of something big and precious and irreplaceable. And I don’t know what comes next.”
…and here is an incisive overview of policy lessons.
“If there is silver lining in this crisis, it is that it might be a societal teaching moment when it comes to an even greater crisis — the climate crisis — which, even as we battle the current pandemic, continues to play out, without abeyance, in the form of inundating seas and unprecedented heat, drought, floods and wildfire.”
Update (4/10/20)
Our three primary crises — climate, equality, coronavirus — must be addressed together.
Why We Can’t Ignore the Link Between COVID-19, Climate Change and Inequity—U.S. News
“Today we face three massive threats, and the only way to neutralize any one of them is to succeed at addressing all three at once.”
As we’ve said before, all of us are on a very steep learning curve, with everything changing from day to day. Especially now, we at the Climate Museum expect to make mistakes. Please help us take advantage of these opportunities to learn. Use the comments section in the blog or send us notes to let us know what we get wrong, what we should do differently, and generally how we can be useful. We can’t respond to everything, but we will read it all.