Sampling of articles from May 2020:
Leaders should act on the climate crisis with the same alacrity they have shown towards COVID-19
Two interrelated curves began their upward trend two centuries ago with the advent of the industrial age. The first curve was the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (or, more generally, all greenhouse gases, GHGs) and the second was the average global temperature curve.A new opportunity to tackle climate change
#
Countries should seize the moment to flatten the climate curve
The pandemic shows how hard it will be to decarbonise—and creates an opportunity
A new opportunity to tackle climate change
Countries should seize the moment to flatten the climate curve
Following the pandemic is like watching the climate crisis with your finger jammed on the fast-forward button. Neither the virus nor greenhouse gases care much for borders, making both scourges global. Both put the poor and vulnerable at greater risk than wealthy elites and demand government action on a scale hardly ever seen in peacetime. And with China’s leadership focused only on its own advantage and America’s as scornful of the World Health Organisation as it is of the Paris climate agreement, neither calamity is getting the co-ordinated international response it deserves.
#
Can covid help flatten the climate curve?
Arriving at a time of change, the pandemic could bring forward the fossil-fuel peak
#
We’re running out of time to flatten the curve — for climate change
#
Leaders should act on the climate crisis with the same alacrity they have shown towards COVID-19
Two interrelated curves began their upward trend two centuries ago with the advent of the industrial age. The first curve was the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (or, more generally, all greenhouse gases, GHGs) and the second was the average global temperature curve.
#
Will we be able to flatten the climate curve?
As the world invests in post-COVID recovery, we need to make plans to manage the still dire effects of climate change.
By David J. Hayes
March 31, 2020
COVID-19 is teaching us an important lesson about “flattening the curve.” We now know that by taking early action like social distancing, we have a fighting chance to avoid a catastrophic build-up of infected patients that can overwhelm the health care system. Pushing out the crisis timeline also provides an opportunity for medical innovators to find and test therapeutics and, ultimately, a vaccine that can vanquish the virus.
This flatten-the-curve teaching also applies to the climate crisis. The timeline differs and, thankfully, the strategies for attacking climate are far more economically palatable than those for the coronavirus. But the message is the same: If we take action now to decarbonize our economy, we have a fighting chance to keep the global temperature rise in check, avoiding the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. Indeed, because of the long life of the climate-damaging greenhouse gases that we are adding to the atmosphere, if we miss our chance to shave off peak emissions, we may be living “above the line” with a climate catastrophe for a very long time.