• EU & Internationaal

• Infectieziekten,
• Duurzaamheid

ROAR Roundtable: COVID-19 and the climate crisis

The path the world takes out of lockdown will shape the climate struggle for decades to come. What can we do to seize the moment?

COVID-19 has forced a re-evaluation of nearly every aspect of how we fight for social and ecological justice. Yet, when it comes to the issue of climate change it can seem as if the virus has changed everything without changing anything at all. The world we live in today looks nothing like it did at the start of the year, but the climate crisis is still the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced and global capital is still hell-bent on ignoring it.

In sharp contrast to their inaction on climate change, the world’s leading imperialist powers responded to the pandemic with a fervor not seen since the last time capital’s interests were so severely threatened at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. Their actions reveal what we have always known: these governments do not lack the power to mitigate the worst effects of climate breakdown. What they lack is the will.

The pandemic has also revealed the enormity of the changes needed to tackle the climate crisis. As the world went into lockdown, stories began to circulate about the pandemic’s unexpected benefits for the environment. With fewer cars on the roads, the air in major cities was cleaner, songbirds seemed louder and the skies bluer. With less fossil fuels being burned, emissions were also falling. Studies suggest that in early April, global emissions were 17 percent lower than they were at the same time last year.

This is impressive as far as it goes. But research also shows that the pandemic has made no appreciable difference to the world’s ability to meet the targets of the COP21 Paris Agreement. In May this year, with much of the world in lockdown, atmospheric CO2 swelled to 418 parts per million — the highest recorded in human history.