Guest essay by Eric Worrall
In the minds of climate alarmists, the climate crisis is every bit as immediate and deadly as the Chinese Coronavirus epidemic.
Delay is deadly: what Covid-19 tells us about tackling the climate crisis
Rightwing governments have denied the problem and been slow to act. With coronavirus and the climate, this costs lives.
The coronavirus pandemic has brought urgency to the defining political question of our age: how to distribute risk. As with the climate crisis, neoliberal capitalism is proving particularly ill-suited to this.
Like global warming, but in close-up and fast-forward, the Covid-19 outbreak shows how lives are lost or saved depending on a government’s propensity to acknowledge risk, act rapidly to contain it, and share the consequences.
On these matters, competence and ideology overlap. Governments willing to intervene have been more effective at stemming the virus than laissez-faire capitalists. The further right the government, the more inclined it is to delay action and offload blame elsewhere. International comparisons suggest this could be making infection and death rates steeper.
Take the US, where Donald Trump is only now acknowledging the seriousness of the pandemic after weeks of claiming fears were exaggerated. Until recently, his government put more money into shielding the oil industry than providing adequate testing kits. He reportedly ordered officials to downplay early warnings because he did not want bad news in an election year. The US now has one of the fastest rising numbers of new cases in the world.
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In the UK, Boris Johnson acknowledged the risk, but did little about it. Though not as extreme in his denial as Trump or Bolsonaro, Johnson’s government first dithered, then dabbled with a policy of “herd-immunity”that was reportedly driven by Dominic Cummings’ desire to protect the economy, even if it cost pensioners’ lives. The UK has since shifted tack and enforced a lockdown, but its controls are still haphazard. Last week, daily deaths in the UK were reckoned to be on a steeper upward curve than Italy was at the same stage.
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In Asia, China initially attempted to hide the problem from the public when the virus emerged in Wuhan, then mobilised huge public resources to enforce a strict lockdown and provide extra hospital beds. South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand also appear to have turned the corner thanks to different combinations of extensive testing, quarantine measures and public health education.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/24/covid-19-climate-crisis-governments-coronavirus
Chinese Communists lying about an outbreak is not a new thing. I’m angry at China for lying, yet again, and I’m upset that many of our politicians complacently accepted China’s assurances. People in all of our governments must have been aware of China’s track record of lying about SARS.
Given China’s track record of lies and bad decisions, to uphold China as model of how to respond to a crisis is as out of touch with reality as claiming climate change is a problem. The Covid-19 crisis only occurred because Chinese authorities silenced doctors who tried to warn people. Early action could have stopped the virus in Wuhan.
China claims they have now contained the outbreak, but after all the lies, how can we trust anything the Chinese government says?
There is nothing praiseworthy about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, then trying to hide the truth.
There is a country which really does deserve praise for their response to a recent outbreak, a country which a few years ago demonstrated skill, courage and determination when dealing with a deadly disease. That country is Nigeria.
In 2014, a deadly Ebola outbreak which could have torn through the Nigerian capital Lagos, a city of 21 million people, was contained to 19 people, 7 of whom sadly died. Nigeria didn’t try to cover up what was happening, or pretend it was business as usual. Nigerian authorities were honest, open and decisive. Their efforts stopped the deadly 2014 Lagos outbreak in its tracks.
5 years ago, in 2015, Bill Gates gave an 8 minute TED talk about the next virus that we’re not prepared for. https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=dz
Stopped clock syndrome; right twice a day (it was an “easy” call for him to make. Eventually something else will come along after Covid-19 even.)
And in 2011 there was a film called contagion based on an article about four years earlier that inspired the writer to produce the script though it could have been coincidental timing.
False equivalencies – another propaganda tactic popular on the Progressive left.
Slime is literally evolving and metastasizing to a whole new level of scum, right before our eyes.
The Wuhan virus is a real threat. “Climate change” isn’t. It’s that simple. But then what would you expect from the “Grauniad”?
Akshually, the virus shows that all of the hundreds of billions wasted on global warming sinecures should have been spent on subsidizing vaccine development, including that of coronaviruses. It also shows that mass transit, dense urban living, and “reusable” grocery bags were all literally pandemic enablers.
But reality has always been optional for this crew.
Jonathan:
“Rightwing governments have denied the problem and been slow to act. With coronavirus and the climate, this costs lives.”
“In Asia, China initially attempted to hide the problem”
You completely contradict yourself and then act as the protector of the Chinese regime saying what a great job they did. Seriously!?
Then you engage in typical Trump Derangement syndrome.
Your thoughts are not worthy of serious consideration- Full stop.
Compared to the Guardian, China’s government is right wing.
Of course, the climate alarm movement is going to try to piggyback on the SARS-CoV-2 situation. Is anybody here really shocked about that?
Guardian: Covid-19 Teaches Us Delaying Climate Action is “Deadly”
On the contrary COVID19 teaches us that the pursuit of worldwide socialism in the name of phoney green fearmongering is the biggest waste of resources in the history of mankind. Had all that money and effort been put to good use we would be far ahead as a race!
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm#ILIMap
“CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 38 million flu illnesses, 390,000 hospitalizations and 23,000 deaths from flu.”
And not word one from the lying, fact free, fake news MSM propaganda machine.
Guess they couldn’t use this FACT to meddle in the election and screw over Trump.
“Rightwing governments have denied the problem and been slow to act.”
China’s government is right wing?
Compared to the Gluggian, it is.
Consider the case of a lady I know who considers the John Birch Society a dangerously left wing organization. 😉 😉
https://www.reference.com/world-view/many-people-die-day-world-b5a2258c374cba57
56 million people die each year in the world, which is an average of about 153,424 people each day.
https://safer-america.com/car-accident-statistics/#Global
1.3 million people die per year worldwide in car accidents.
40,327 people were killed in the United States in motor vehicle collisions, during 2017.
Eric,
You earlier did a great article on the Green Swan.
Seems we need a new article now on the Corona Swan.
By delaying we have at least not done as much harm as we would have done if we had all fallen for the proven by hindsight scam of man made global warming. We are three years past the tipping point date so are reporters too thick to see climate change is NOT following a tipping point curve even after seeing it displayed repeatedly day in day out in the corona virus figures?
Unfortunately, many people who’re rightly skeptical of the fake “climate emergency” are also wrongly skeptical of this crisis (or at least they were, initially). So-called “experts” have been “crying wolf” so long and loud about the “climate emergency,” “catastrophe,” or even “Apocalypse,” that many astute people, who’ve discovered that manmade climate change is actually modest and benign, have become dangerously complacent when they hear cries of “wolf!”
I know of at least a dozen in all age brackets who no longer trust the government and think this is conditioning for accepting green zero transport for the plebs except essential travel and who still went to the pubs right until compulsory shutdown. Well done Greater Dubmturd and the climate scammers.
It is an unfailing ‘tell’ of an ideologue that they will attach their message to any discussion regardless of the original point of the discussion.
Thus – discussion is Covid 19 – Ideologue likens it to Global Warming
Discussion about Covid 19 – Feminist brings in gender
and so it goes.
What it tells us actually is that complex models such as climate change or Covid-19 spread with many unknown input variables are complete crap at accurate output over the space of a month in the case of Covid-19 or hundreds of years in the case of global warming. The prediction for the UK of 500,000 deaths from Covid-19 has been decreased to maybe 20,000 with over half of those deaths likely to occur within a year from the underlying conditions that made them vulnerable in the first place. If your prediction varies between 20,000 and 500,000 deaths you might have an issue with the accuracy of your model output.