Podcast: Ulrich Volz: Pandemic is but a Prelude to Looming Climate Crisis
This crisis is a rupture. A moment of profound turmoil and disruption. Even
more than the 2008–09 global financial crisis—which was most directly felt
in the United States and in European countries—this pandemic is affecting
almost all of humanity. In countries around the world, rich and poor, the
COVID-19 crisis has exposed the vulnerabilities of our health and social
systems and the fragility of our economies. It has also highlighted in
dramatic ways the need for better disaster preparation. Increasing
resilience needs to be one of the main guiding principles when rebuilding
our economies and societies after the crisis. We need to ensure we are
better prepared to withstand future pandemics but also the other major
looming threat to humanity—climate change.
Despite long-standing and plentiful warnings from scientists about the
risks of a pandemic, the world was woefully unprepared for this crisis. The
same is unfortunately true for climate change. As was the case with
pandemics, scientists have long been sounding the alarm about a climate
crisis. There can be no doubt that it is here and accelerating. Recent
wildfires in Australia and California, the thaw of permafrost in the
Arctic, and the increase in the number and intensity of storms, floods,
droughts, and other climate-related natural disasters all point to a
problem that has already arrived. The earth will soon exceed climate
tipping points, presenting a real threat of abrupt and irreversible climate
changes.
This pandemic strikes us at a time when—according to the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change—we have about a decade left to achieve a low-carbon
transition and bring the world economy to a trajectory limiting global
warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. The next few years are our
last chance to avoid catastrophic global warming. It is imperative that the
various crisis response measures amount to a transformative policy
response. Short-term crisis responses aimed at protecting jobs and boosting
recovery need to be coupled with longer-term, strategic goals of mitigating
climate change and shoring up climate change adaptation and resilience. As
much as possible, we need to use economic stimulus and recovery measures to
strengthen the resilience of our economies and engineer a just transition.
As IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has said, this is the time to
“revive or lose” the Paris Agreement.
