We've Been Complacent About Climate Change For A Very Long Time. Can COVID-19 Finally Wake Us Up And Help Us Coexist With Nature?

In a now distant-seeming 2013, the British Guardian published an editorial that posed an interesting question — how would humanity react to the discovery of an asteroid doomed to collide with our planet on a specific and known date in the future, wiping out a large portion of our population and destroying our way of life?

The editorial unfolded to point out that climate change is every bit as dangerous as an asteroid. There's no "end date" on which life will just stop. Climate change is a gradual process rather than a single event, and both humans and other organisms will still be around for a very long time. Climate change will, however, be catastrophic. Yet, from average citizens to policy makers and companies, we don't seem to be all that invested in saving ourselves, or our life-giving planet and all its ecosystems. 

We still don't seem to get the message.

As Harold Wilson, who served two terms as British prime minister in the '60s and '70s said, "a week is a long time in politics" — and 2013 is indeed the distant past. 

Since The Guardian published that editorial, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's doomful Global Warming of 1.5°C report came out. It's become clear that it's not only too late to stop climate change, we're already very much living it. Forget about 1 °C​ — given the current course, we'll be looking at 6 °C​. Calls for action have not stopped, but they now include plans to adapt to inevitable man-made climate change as well as plans to slow it down. 

Either way, we'll be dealing with rising temperatures, rising sea levels, warming oceans and ocean acidification, disappearing ice caps, and ever-increasing extreme weather events. Either way, we're looking at mass extinction events among other species. If that wasn't real enough for you (and because we are, after all, a health site), the World Health Organization has projected that climate change will cause an additional 250,000 annual deaths between 2030 and 2050, specifically from malaria, diarrhea, heat stress, and malnutrition. 

Enter COVID-19.

COVID-19 very much turned out to be the proverbial asteroid from the 2013 editorial. Everyone who could contribute anything at all was indeed enlisted, almost immediately, to do everything in their power to fight this new enemy. This new enemy that, like climate change, we can't see with the naked eye but the effects of which are catastrophic. 

Far too many lives were lost in the battle against the novel coronavirus already, yes, but not for lack of effort. Everyone who could do anything was enlisted to fight this global enemy and help our species survive, including laypeople, by way of sheltering in place. And like that old editorial said, maybe we will even succeed. 

The goal of the fight? To save lives. To slow the spread of COVID-19 so that healthcare systems across the globe aren't so overwhelmed that they cannot possibly look after patients whose lives hang in the balance because they have come down with severe coronavirus cases. 

The goal of the fight? To save ourselves — humanity first and foremost. Judging by the number of nation-specific gestures I've personally observed, like the display of national flags and singing the national anthem, our own country, next. And then ourselves — our families, and us as individuals. 

The goal of the fight? To deal with an immediate threat, immediately. 

But the side effects? Lions and sea lions reclaiming lost habitats amid COVID-19 lockdowns. (Temporary) cuts in greenhouse emissions as air travel, commuter traffic jams, and factories slowed down across the globe. (Pre-existing air pollution, meanwhile, is still thought to contribute to the risk of dying from COVID-19.)

Some have even blamed COVID-19 on the same destructive human impulses that led to climate change — eating away at other species' habitats, and, for that matter, simply eating other species. 

One thing is clear — human-produced climate change has been in the news, and on policy makers' radars, at least since the late 1980s, while early birds warned us about it much earlier than that. Yes, even dating back to the ancient Greeks. If you're a Millennial, you've grown up hearing of climate change. If you're older, you've been confronted with it (and been bored by it, perhaps) for decades now. 

It's under these circumstances that we welcome Earth Day this year. This is a crossroads for humanity, and time to reflect on our past failures and recent successes. 

This time, let's heed the call — the one that warns our way of life is not sustainable and we're nearly out of time. This time, let's really hear it. Even as we desperately want things to return to the way they were before the pandemic, let's shed our old and foolish ways. Let's not stick our heads in the sand any longer. COVID-19 has shown us what we can do if we must. We must. So now, let's rise to the occasion.