“The reality is that climate impacts are here. They are now. And they matter to all of us already, because they affect everything we already care about.”
Where late the sweet birds sang, they’re singing again.
One of the unintended consequences of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is that the air is clearer, the water clearer and creatures great and small are reclaiming the garden of Eden. Or what’s left of it.
Hardly anyone doubts that when — if — things return to normal, many of us will go back to living much the way we were before, burning through fossil fuels by the barrel, driving the biggest car we can find to drive two blocks to the supermarket — what’s with the parking in this place? — importing fresh strawberries in January (northern hemisphere) and June (southern hemisphere), all the while blithely ignoring the inconvenient truth that the polar ice sheets are melting, sea levels are rising and the Great Barrier Reef is no longer so great, owing to the latest bleaching event.
If human history teaches us anything it’s that some things never change. Climate denial, for one. COVID-19 may be a shock to the system, but the climate deniers are still singing from the same hymn sheet.
The six stages of climate denial are:
It’s not real.
It’s not us.
It’s not that bad.
It’s too expensive to fix.
The solution does nothing to fix the underlying problem.
It’s too late anyway.
Some things do change, though. The right wing’s response to climate change, for example, has shifted dramatically, in keeping with the right’s response to the coronavirus pandemic: “It’s a hoax!” is now, “Let millions die, it’s nature’s way.”
The new catchphrase is “herd immunity.” If enough people are exposed to COVID and survive, the reasoning goes, their antibodies will protect them against any relapses likely to occur.
Never mind that the next virus will throw a whole new sequence of indecipherable RNA into the mix.
The right’s auto-response to climate change — “It’s a hoax! — has changed to, “If your island home is vanishing below the tideline, move to higher ground.
“If you’re starving because of drought, move to where it rains.”
The six stages of climate denial were framed and named by Katharine Hayhoe, a Canadian climate scientist with the Texas Tech Climate Center. Hayhoe is a professor of atmospheric science, one of Time’s magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year, a UN Champion of the Earth and a self-described knitter, pastor’s wife and mom. She has 153,000 followers on Twitter, and most recently tweeted, “Just when I think I’ve heard all the bad news, I learn something new.”
(This is a common theme among climate scientists, as opposed to climate deniers: Scientists admit when they don’t know something; climate deniers know they’re right about everything, and so don’t bother to question anything.)
“I’m not suspicious,” Hayhoe is fond of saying. “Just Canadian.”
Was coronavirus caused by climate change? “No!”
So does that mean climate change has nothing to do with the spread of viruses and diseases? “No!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruOl1R5cpnw
The right question is not, did climate change cause something, but, did climate change make it worse?
In the past week, Hayhoe and other scientists have cited research that shows that air pollution nearly doubled the risk of dying from the 2003 SARS outbreak. Now COVID is following a similar pattern: Even a small increase in long-term exposure to [particulate matter] increases the death rate for COVID-19.
The six stages of climate denial again:
It’s not real.
It is, actually.
It’s not us.
Even if nominally true, which it isn’t, we’re not helping
It’s not that bad.
Ask the polar bears.
It’s too expensive to fix.
The cost of not fixing it may be more.
The solution does nothing to fix the underlying problem.
Which is?
It’s too late anyway.
It’s never too late. Until, of course, it is.
