An Earth Day Lesson from COVID-19

by Leigh Pomeroy

In the midst of this COVID-19 crisis we are focusing on the short run: How to stay healthy. How to care for those who are sick. How to protect our most vulnerable populations. How to protect and help those who are caring for others.

But in the long run the COVID-19 crisis is teaching us some important lessons. First, once we recognize a crisis — which, admittedly, often takes too long — we have the ability to act quickly. Second, we do have the capacity to put aside differences and work together towards a common goal.

It has often been said that there is a silver lining on every cloud and, similarly, that when given lemons make lemonade.

In a way, one could look at COVID-19 as a planetary-wide vaccine itself. That is, while it creates hardship (and even death) for far too many, it can serve to wake us up to the real, long-term challenges that we face — challenges that make COVID-19 look like child’s play: climate change, species extinction, and food and water shortages due to environmental degradation and overpopulation.

While COVID-19 has been a rapid onslaught, these long-term environmental challenges are slowly evolving, though scientists have well documented them and everyone else seeing their effects each year.

Fortunately, what we learn from dealing with COVID-19 can now be applied to facing and reversing these environmental challenges.

The methodology is kindergarten simple: First, we must recognize these challenges and listen to scientists rather than self-interested politicians, pundits, and pandering media. In this pandemic we are doing this, and the results are bearing fruit as the incidence of the virus is now beginning to taper off.

Second, we must act with forcefulness to confront the challenge. Allocating the same amount that Congress has so far passed to deal with COVID-19 — currently over $2 trillion — would go a long way toward funding measures to prevent climate change. Scientists and economists are telling us that we will eventually have to spend at least that much on mitigation efforts if we do little or nothing about prevention.

In other words, pay now or pay much more later.

Those who have fought against doing anything to forestall climate change have used the argument that such measures will wreck the economy. Well, now we know what a wrecked economy feels like. Yes, some are suffering, but the vast numbers of us are still around and relearning old pleasures like how to spend time with family.

When circumstances change, the economy changes with it. Before the pandemic, two of the fastest growing jobs in the economy were solar installer and wind energy technician. Today, due to the pandemic, many jobs throughout the economy have been temporarily shed, but others are being created to reflect this new reality.

Let’s look at COVID-19 as a wake-up call and as a lesson from Mother Nature: Humankind is not all-powerful. There are forces against which we are powerless. But if we recognize the rules that have been set up by forces greater than ourselves, that if we learn to play within those rules, then we can together — humankind and nature — succeed to make a better planet for us all.