Chris White Tech Reporter
March 19, 2020 12:50 PM ET
Environmentalists and activists say they’ve found a way to better sell climate change to a skeptical American public: paint global warming as a pandemic on par with the likes of coronavirus.
Environmentalists are pointing to drastic dips in carbon emissions in China and Europe during the coronavirus scourge to craft a new climate message. They also suggest that there are some positive lessons to be learned from the virus, which has killed more than 8,000 people globally.
“If we can think about how to prepare for climate change like a pandemic, maybe there will be a positive outcome to all of this,” Christopher Jones, an environmental researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, told NBC News in a report published Wednesday.
He added: “We can help prevent crises in the future if we are prepared. I think there are some big-picture lessons here that could be very useful.” (RELATED: Environmental Activists Are Blocking The Clean-Up Of A Polluted Mining Site In Idaho)
NBC News’s report cited a March 13 Washington Post report that analyzed data from one of the European Space Agency’s satellites that seemed to suggest that nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, fell dramatically over Northern Italy, a portion of Europe that has been the most negatively impacted.
More than 1,800 people who were exposed to the virus have died in Italy over the last several weeks as the country has seen nearly 25,000 cases overall. Nearly 430 people died in the country in one day after contracting coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China in November 2019.
Other academics are offering similar critiques.
“As we move to restart these economies, we need to use this moment to think about what we value,” Jacqueline Klopp, co-director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University in New York City, told NBC.
“Do we want to go back to the status quo,” she rhetorically asked before adding: “or do we want to tackle these big structural problems and restructure our economy and reduce emissions and pollution?”
One environmentalist journalist pointed out that China’s draconian crackdown is creating the most benefits.
“Every cloud has a silver lining,” John Gibbons, an environmental journalist and commentator, said during a Thursday episode of NewsTalk.
The air quality improved “dramatically” over China during the past few months thanks in part to Beijing’s move to idle industries, he added.
The reasons why the public is handling the pandemic differently than, say, climate change is because one is happening over decades while the other is an immediate concern, according to Craig Altemose, the executive director of Better Future Project, a group pushing climate change policy.
“The international response to COVID-19 stands in stark contrast to our slow, half-hearted response to the climate crisis,” Altemose wrote Wednesday in an editorial for the Boston Globe. The reasons are obvious, he added: “COVID-19 is a crisis playing out over the course of days rather than decades.”
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The present situation is a first for all humans living today……… yet we have so many EXPERTS to explain it???
Probably the same experts that can unreservedly predict the future of our climate?????
And they use computer modeling – on a ridiculously simplified basis – rather than animal entrails. Wonderful. Culturally appropriate prophecy with the usual relationship to data gathering – none.
The greens are not worried that covid 19 might be cancelled because of a climate conference.
The greens are worried that a climate conference might be cancelled due to covid 19.
Only a prime time wazzock would fail to understand that one is a real crisis and one is a confected crisis
Excellent succinct summation EternalOptimist!
What a joke!
“Paint global warming’, which in this current phase has been whined about since the 1980s as a “pandemic”?
Do they have an “Obliviate” curse we don’t know about?
Not only does the emperor not have any clothes, they’re dancing on NYC’s Wall Street visible to everyone.
The country’s businesses, industries, companies and citizens are taking a hard economic fall.
During this economic shutdown, I seriously doubt ‘renewable energy’ sources covered for closed businesses.
When the country needs to return to a firm financial position, it will be hydroelectric, nuclear and fossil fuels the country depends upon.
It will be the same for China. What England, Germany and Canada fall back upon is their choice. Only if it isn’t the dependable energy makers, their return to solid business/industrial strength is in doubt.
Especially, as I doubt the alarmists can prove the Earth cooled during the past two months.
Nor, will they be able to demonstrate unusual warming as countries pull out all stops to regain economic strength.
Thousands of deaths have a silver lining? These vermin are truly showing their shameless colours now. I hope all the millions secluded in their apartments take time to reflect to see it that is pretty much the life the “Greens” would have everyone else live so they could feel self important.
Their solutions are a huge amplifier of the pandemic problem to begin with. Dense cities and mass transit are extremely fertile places to transmit infection as NYC is proving. Yes, let’s talk about how all of their solutions to the non-problem of global warming will really endanger human lives.
Isn’t that what they want to talk about, being committed to science and facts after all…
What dismays is that the argument for climate change mitigation and COVID-19 countermeasures is the same. It goes like this: Somebody says that something really bad might happen. The media get hold of it, and very soon the story becomes that the bad thing will probably happen. And then it becomes, we have to act now as if the bad thing is a certainty because if we argue about whether it is likely or not we will lose valuable time to avert the bad thing. That’s what “the science is settled” is founded on. It means, we don’t have time to argue. We must obey.
Here’s what I think is going to happen: In Canada, the death toll from COVID-19 is going to continue to be light, and mostly confined to the elderly. The media will just keep doing scare stories about the pandemic as if everyone were seeing people dropping dead in the streets. And then, suddenly and quickly, the whole thing will just kind of fade away, and the media people will never admit that they had made a mistake. Now of course that’s a guess, but I’ll be vindicated or humbled in about four weeks.
I don’t think you can sell that line of thought to the Italians of Lombardy.
Hint: have you seen the procession of army trucks taking away the corpses?
A question that I enjoy asking my climate-alarmist friends is the following;
OK, so hypothetically, let’s say we discovered something that would stop NET human CO2 generation virtually in its tracks, but without significant, drastic political changes in the world. Let’s say, hypothetically, that every power-plant and fossil-fuel sink/CO2 emitting device on Earth could be replaced with something carbon-neutral, and sustainable in, say 5 years’ time. Let’s say that this thing was cheap and plentiful, and the technology was available to anyone, in any country, at low cost, without significant political changes.
So, given this, would you still feel the same way about climate-change?
The true-colors usually come right out, one way or another.
Some folks actually get angry when you ask this hypothetical question.
I have just phoned my mother, to let her know the nice Green people have said the air is now much cleaner and easier to breath, thanks to the Corona virus effects.
She said “what about the ones who can’t breath because of Coronavirus, is it better for them too?”
Every silver lining….
I think we can be certain, the alarmists of climate will try to use this virus to their advantage and draw parallels between the two issues. Here in Ireland, the virus has killed climate scaremongering. The loonies must be raging and scared that their beloved ideology has lost traction. When faced with a real Global issue, even if there is a surprising amount of drama and hype attached, the imaginary climate emergency/crisis fails.
Right now, it’s almost as if anyone who dared mention another ”crisis”, they would be ridiculed. When this virus issue is over, people will have ”crisis fatigue” and will want to return to a ”normal” life as soon as possible. The media is the main problem then and will have a need to keep the scaremongering wheels turning. C.C. may have taken a serious hit, but is it gone? I doubt it. It will need to re invent itself, and that’s happening right now.
Proof positive that enviro activism is a manifestation of a misanthropic mindset.
They are part of a diverse distribution of secular sects that socially justifies normalization of wicked solutions for what they claim are hard problems.
I assume this means there will be a corresponding dip in temperatures caused by the emissions. When it does not happen it is weather not climate of course. One almost can believe the conspiracy theory that this was caused by environmentalists to set up the police state needed to enforce their ideology. On the other hand maybe the public will have learnt what a tipping point graph looks like to realise climate change is not even remotely close to being one.