Impact of climate change as apocalyptic as COVID, but our leaders just don’t seem to get it

As the world entered 2020, its attention was divided by two incidents. The wildfires in Australia, though localised, were part of a growing global pattern of natural disasters linked to climate change. The unknown virus striking Wuhan, though local, soon spread like a wildfire across the globe.

In a matter of weeks, SARS-CoV2 shut down the world and disrupted economies. It laid bare the consequences of lack of infrastructure and socio-economic inequity. It also created an impetus for finding a vaccine. This search for a cure catalysed private and public investment, reduced time for government approval, and pushed international cooperation to new levels.

According to the IMF, the total tab of SARS-Cov2 on lost global output will be $28 trillion.

These costs will have a lingering impact on the global community. For example, according to the UNCTAD report ‘Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Trade and Development: Transitioning to a New Normal’, unless governments take drastic measures, countries will not be able to meet the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. The 17 goals of this agenda include ending poverty, ending hunger, ensuring healthy lives,

reducing inequality between countries and within countries. Achieving these goals is going to be a challenge to say the least, given the pandemic caused unemployment.

As per the report, ‘as many as 1.6 billion of the world’s 2 billion informal economy workers have experienced significant damage to their capacity to make a living’

There is enough data to argue that socio-economic inequality has far reaching consequences for a nation. Last year, the world witnessed how this existing inequality within countries and between countries played out in combating the virus. Unfortunately, it will continue to play out in the delivery of vaccines. This will have consequences for all countries because a restive virus will divert expenditure, impede production, trade, and travel. This will ultimately delay socio-economic recovery.

In 2020, the 10 most destructive climate events cost insurers $150 billion, as per a report by the charity Christian Aid. This may not paint the complete picture of the true cost because many cannot afford insurance, especially in poorer countries.

Besides these macro-economic costs there is also those that cannot be measured, the human cost. Death being one collateral of extreme weather events, Climate change leads to increase in vector borne diseases, human migration caused by drought and famine, and disruption of agricultural and fishery patterns to name a few intangible costs. These have a domino effect on a country’s economy.

The predicament that the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) faced in 2020 couldn’t paint a clearer vision of the future. Things were so bad in the 2020 hurricane season that the WMO ran out of names for them. The organisation resorted to Greek alphabets. The WMO also

acknowledged that 2020 was the culmination of a decade of ‘exceptional heat’.

We have known about climate change since the 1970s. It has been here long enough for it to have undergone a name change - from global warming to climate change. The name change was a consequence of a better understanding of the impacts of anthropogenic emissions.

However, there has been a reticence on the part of industry and nations to meet the challenge. For example, it is not enough to build large solar power farms when fossil fuels remain the mainstay of powering the economy. Paying lip service absolves leaders from across the board of their role in creating the situation and aggravating it. Taking hard decisions that are long term are not only existential threats to them but go against the economic model that the world has grown on.

But the response to SARS-CoV2 has proved that hard decisions can be taken and will be accepted with sound leadership and planning.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the decisions caused an economic nightmare. There were a variety of reasons for this – the speed at which the virus covered the globe forced decisions to be taken overnight without preparation; the medico-social infrastructure was overwhelmed; people choosing to remain ignorant or getting swayed by personal selfishness and, of course, the stupidity of their leaders.

But climate change and its impacts are unlike the pandemic. The pandemic spread quickly and the results of contracting the virus --hospitalisation, even death -- were there for all to see. On the other hand, with climate change we have been given time to change.

However, we don’t seem to be making the best of it, which includes creating a large sustained global voice to demand more be done to

combat it. The reason is quite simple: for the general public the effects of climate change always seem to threaten or impact a third party.

Further, there is always the explanation of ‘vagaries of weather’ as one goes about one’s life through floods or any other extreme weather event. Worse, those able to do the most about combating climate change are not invested in it because the alternatives -- buying a better air conditioner for example -- are easier and less disruptive to their lifestyles. Combating it has been hobbled by the absence of a sense of urgency and the appreciation of it being an existential threat. As a consequence, leadership in any form is lacking.

There is an urban myth, a fable if you will, about a frog’s inability to self-protect if placed in a pan of water which is very gradually brought to a boil. However, its self-preservation instincts kick in if placed in warm water.

SARS-CoV2 in 2020 gave the world an opportunity to bear the cross of bad decision making by leaders. In the case of climate change, we and generations to come will be victims who bear witness to our and our leader’s short-sightedness.

Views are personal