Three thoughts on climate change - in the light of the corona virus

I was recently asked to record a short lecture to be used to open a conference on climate change. Here is what I wrote - and I would love to read what you think, and get ideas for additional thoughts on the subject!

First thought: the corona virus will change the way we deal with climate change - for better or for worse

Meet Moisha, a fifty-year-old programmer who lives in Rishon Lezion. Moisha would go to work in Tel Aviv and back every day in his private car. When he needed to shop, he would go to the supermarket in the shopping center and look for parking in the parking lot for long minutes. When he needed to get medical treatment at the clinic, he sometimes spent almost an hour trying to find parking on the street.

and now? Moisha works four days from home, and only comes to the office on the other two days. He orders the shopping through the network, and the deliveries reach him in an efficient and economical way in terms of energy and air pollution. When he needs to receive medical treatment, he first talks to the doctor online, and in many cases discovers that there is no need to go to the clinic at all... and he can also order the drugs he needs online.

The meaning of all these changes, when you extend them from Moisha to Orna, to Sandeep, to Brittany and to Zhi Sung, is that they all consume less energy - and emit less greenhouse gases.

Already at the beginning of the crisis there were claims that the corona would affect climate change, among other things as a result of the sharp decrease in the number of passengers on planes and on roads. The phenomenon was so dramatic that it was called the Carbon Crash. According to forecasts by the International Energy Agency, the world will use six percent less energy this year[1] - Equivalent to erasing Central and South America from the Earth[2]. This means that carbon emissions will also be dramatically lower than they have been in recent years.

The good news is that some of the changes are here to stay. Even after the virus is gone, Moisha will be able to continue to enjoy the services developed for remote access in 2020 and beyond. We will work, enjoy and live with higher energy efficiency, and energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions will inevitably be affected by this.

The less good news is that the decrease in energy consumption has also led to a sharp drop in oil prices, to only a third of the price in 2012. This makes sense: if there is less demand for oil, then the price will also drop. The problem is that high oil prices have been a great way to put pressure on the free market to switch to renewable energy. Now that oil prices have fallen, many countries will buy enough of the black gold to fill their oil reserves for the next year or two, or sign contracts and deals for the next few years based on the recent low prices and the need for oil suppliers - like Russia - to get cash quickly to deal with the crisis the economic

The really bad news is that the world is entering a severe economic crisis - perhaps the worst we have known since the Great Depression of 1929. In recent decades, the opinion has been accepted - especially in the greener circles - that if we just stop the consumer culture and the economy, then the planet will recover. The truth is more complex. There are almost seven and a half billion people living on the planet today, and we need to find ways to feed them all and provide them with a satisfactory standard of living. The global economy is the one thanks to which we provide them with food, internet, computers and other basic necessities of existence. It is also the one that allows us to invest almost 1.7 trillion dollars in research and development of more efficient technologies for producing food, purifying water, creating energy and more[3]. Obviously, it is important not to overdo consumption, but a dramatic collapse of the global economy will seriously damage the science and technology that should rescue us from the current climate crisis.

Add to this point the worsening crisis in relations between the countries and the undermining of globalization and the previous world order that was based on the empire under the auspices of the United States (it is recommended to listen to the podcast "The Great Game" on this topic), and you will understand why the corona virus may actually disrupt our attempts to deal with the climate crisis, instead of helping them.

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Second thought: the chance for the strengthening of science

Something strange about the corona virus. It does not attack every country equally. Of the 25 million patients diagnosed with the virus, approximately 12 million - half of all patients - come from countries whose leaders stubbornly refuse to address what science has to teach us about climate change. I refer specifically to the United States, Brazil and Russia. And at the very same time, countries that take climate change seriously, such as New Zealand and Japan, manage to eradicate the virus relatively easily.

If we believed in superstitions or a higher providence, then it would be clear to us that someone sent the virus from above to eradicate the last foci of resistance to the understanding that the planet is warming and that we must take urgent action to moderate, delay and stop climate change. Apparently this interpretation is not correct. The simpler truth is that we discover in times of crisis how great our reliance on science is, and what happens when we don't go to its light. The scientific method is fundamentally flawed - it is based on endless bickering and battles between scientists, settled only over many years by distilling the truth from laboratory experiments. Despite this, it is the most successful method we know that allows us to get closer to the objective truth of reality. Thanks to it, we can develop models that will predict the future, and even if these are often inaccurate, they are still better than closing our eyes and completely ignoring what is happening.

Anti-scientific leaders are similar to anti-democratic leaders: as long as there are no immediate consequences for the subjects, no one gets excited and few take to the streets. But when suddenly there is a crisis and the economic situation worsens, then the status of the rulers is seriously undermined. That was the real problem with the climate crisis: populist leaders could deny it, and because change was coming so slowly, they wouldn't bear the long-term consequences.

There is a chance - although it is still too early to assess how real it is - that the corona virus will help us break this cycle. By now it should be clear that rulers who do not take science seriously are exposing their countries to great damage - whether due to the corona virus, or due to the climate crisis. It can be hoped that even after the corona virus disappears from the world or its effect moderates in a few years, people will still remember what the true meaning of denying science is, and will act against leaders who try to do so on any issue, including climate change.

Is this what will happen? One can hope.

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Third thought: understanding the possibility of global disasters

At the beginning of the year, the corona virus began to spread in the Far East. Italy, Britain, the United States, remain complacent. Not only at the level of the leaders, but also at the level of the citizens themselves. "Well, then there is a new virus in the Far East. So what?" Things you see there, you don't see here.

In February, it was already clear that the virus had reached Europe. Countries closed their gates and began to prepare for an epidemic. In the United States - Trump was still convinced that the virus would simply disappear.

A month later, even Trump had already changed his tone while the various states of the United States closed schools and began to fight over medical equipment.

In each of the stages of the spread of the virus, the leaders and citizens did not understand what a global world meant. They knew they could receive a shipment from UPS within 24 hours from Singapore to the United States, but they did not internalize and accept that a virus can also arrive just as quickly - and with the same courier. They failed to face the simple truth, that we have shrunk the world and reduced the distances between the continents to almost zero. The technology of the human race has allowed a global catastrophe to occur.

The climate crisis is a similar global disaster. It progresses at a slower pace, but in order to deal with it we must first accept that man today has the ability to influence the world on a scale that was not possible just a hundred years ago. We must shake off the notion that each country is an island unto itself, and embrace the new understanding that we may all drown together, if we do not reach global agreements and adopt a joint course of action.

One could almost argue that we were lucky with the corona virus: a simple and effective way of coping is to close the borders and separate ourselves from the environment. It is impossible to deal with the climate crisis with such a solution. The only way is to act together against him.

Will we succeed? It already depends on all of us. In our leaders, certainly, but also in us to know how to put pressure on them and demand that they deal with the impending crisis.

Success for all of us.

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[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2020

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

[3] http://uis.unesco.org/sites/all/modules/custom/uis_applications/apps/visualisations/research-and-development-spending/

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• to feed the world in a time of crisis
• The time of the Corona, the age of the climate crisis
• The giant fires in Australia: the media downplays the connection to the climate crisis
• Nature against climatic disasters