Enduring the Climate and Coronavirus Crises: What Will It Take to Get Through Both?

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This story is a part of Covering Climate Nowโ€™s week of coverage focused on Climate Solutions, to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Covering Climate Now is a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climateย story.

While time feels distorted these days, it was only seven months and a lifetime ago that millions around the globe, led by school children, were marching in the streets, passionately demanding action and investment to match the scale of the climate crisis. Today, weโ€™d instinctively recoil imagining those crowds, fearful of the potential to spread more than the idea that humans deserve a livable climate. But in both cases, pulling away from each other, at least in spirit, may be our collectiveย undoing.ย 

Simultaneously surviving climate disruption and this pandemic โ€” because they cannot be separated โ€” will require us to grapple with two majorย challenges.

The first is pursuing an honest reckoning, a deep examination of the systems that got us here and are keeping us sinking up to our soft throats in the mire. Scientists and health experts will be a part of that, of course, but we canโ€™t accomplish this massive task without journalists (whose industry is collapsing despite record readership in the U.S.). In the words of climate justice writer Mary Annaรฏse Heglar, we donโ€™t need a fact-finding mission; we need a truth-tellingย mission.ย ย 

Now, as ever, we need independent journalists dedicated to holding the powerful accountable and to raising up the voices and experiences of the most vulnerable. We canโ€™t arrive at the solutions for limiting these disastersโ€™ tolls without naming and removing the obstacles that stand betweenย us.

Misinformation, racism, inequality, the exchange of influence and money, the manipulation of entrenched power systems, these are obstacles to limiting the impact of the coronavirus on everyone but especially on communities of color, the elderly, and people with disabilities. The same goes for the climateย crisis.

In other words, as climate journalist Amy Westervelt of Drilled News has said, accountability journalism is solutions journalism. That accountability will help us reach more sustainable solutions, help us know when and how to do the hard things, to find the path uphill that was made steeper and more treacherous by those who kept us from preparing and actingย earlier.

Truck driving past "caution water over road" sign in Oklahoma
A truck drives past a โ€œCaution Water Over Roadโ€ sign in El Reno, Oklahoma, in August 2007.
Credit: FEMA/Marvin Nauman, publicย domain

For many, the uncertainty of this global moment is fueling high levels of anxiety and a reflexive tendency to pull away from all other humans, especially strangers, and to hoard cleaning supplies and canned foods for ourselves. But I canโ€™t stop thinking about last September, when I sat in a packed hall in Seattle, Washington, listening to author and journalist Naomi Klein on her latest book tour.

A key question for society during the upheaval of these times, she said then, is asking ourselves โ€œwhat kind of humans we’re going to be as we enter the age of climate disruption.โ€ That imperative is no less relevant during the pandemic. โ€œWe need to hold on to our humanity as the shocks come and we need to build societies that โ€ฆ value solidarity,โ€ Klein said. โ€œWe have to weave that into the kinds of societies we build. And this is why something like healthcare is not an add-on to the Green Newย Deal.โ€

The second challenge for getting through the climate crisis and COVID pandemic is holding onto our humanity, and therefore, each other, as we endure bothย disasters.ย 

A New Normal That Is Notย Normal

Iโ€™m writing this from my home in Seattle, which was also home to the first COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. Roughly six weeks ago, as I saw my city begin to shut down, to lose its semblance of โ€œnormal life,โ€ I was losing my 92-year-old grandmother to congestive heart failure. When she finally passed away, I sat trapped in Seattle, watching her tiny funeral gathering in Dayton, Ohio, live-streamed on my computer screen. Iโ€™m a middle-class white woman who already works from home. I am not the most vulnerable, or affected, by either coronavirus or climate change. But the world has fundamentally changed in tragic ways because of both and will continue to change in ways we canโ€™t yet fullyย know.

Climate scientists for years have spoken of a โ€œnew normalโ€ for the super-charged flooding, heat waves, wildfires, and hurricanes weโ€™ve been seeing due to climate disruption, a โ€œnormalโ€ that is only normal in its extremes andย inconsistency.

By all accounts, a similar โ€œnew normal that is not normalโ€ is coming this summer and well beyond because of this pandemic. A โ€œnew normalโ€ with a lot more face masks, uncertainty, and physical distancing. A โ€œnew normalโ€ where communities periodically retreat from spikes in infections, where we curb travel and lock ourselves in our homes, where we delay weddings and live-stream funerals, waiting for widespread testing and an effectiveย vaccine.ย 

People in face masks in line to enter a market in Angono, Philippines
People wear face masks while lining upย to enter the Angono Public Market in Angono,ย Philippines, on March 24, 2020.
Credit:ย Philippine News Agency/Joey Razon, publicย domain

Meanwhile, the very real likelihood that the still-barreling climate crisis will compound coronavirus infections is, frankly,ย terrifying.

Consider what would have happened if the worst of the recent Australian wildfires took place this March and April, instead of last December and January. What would we have done โ€” what will we do โ€” with the crush of evacuees huddled on beaches, without basic supplies, under the smoky banner of a sky whose color is best described as โ€œapocalypticย redโ€?

A World onย Fire

On her book tour last September, Klein described what she calls the three fires of our time. The first fire, she said, is the at times literal fire of climate disruption. That fire, Australians and plenty others now know veryย intimately.

However, Kleinโ€™s second fire โ€” the global political fires โ€œspreading hatred [and] supremacist logicโ€ โ€” is working in opposition to efforts to extinguish the first fire. Led by strongmen who dismiss the urgency of addressing the climate crisis (and now, in some cases, the coronavirus) the flood of right-wing nationalism across the U.S. and the world promotes a sense that these countries are under siege by outside threats, such as terrorists or immigrants, Klein said, and that the best response is to close their borders to protect againstย โ€œinvaders.โ€ย 

This year, we have seen countries close their borders to keep out the legitimate threat of disease but also have seen spikes in racism and xenophobia. Conservative protesters in the U.S., with the backing of far-right groups,ย are holding angry rallies to โ€œliberateโ€ their states from stay-at-homeย orders.

The rise of populism across Europe and elsewhere simultaneously has fueled climate science denial. Today, those groups who have downplayed and opposed strong action on the climate crisis often have extensive overlap with those who have downplayed and opposed strong action against the COVID-19 pandemic, with many pressing to quickly reopen theย economy.ย 

A cruel irony is that research suggests the effects of climate change may be spurring the rise of nationalism by causing societies to feel more threatened, and in turn, hunker down against those perceived as outsiders. โ€œHunkering downโ€ practically has become the mantra of this year as schools, businesses, and entire countries have shut down to care for the infected and prevent the further spread of the deadlyย coronavirus.

Last fall, the reason Klein said she wasnโ€™t overwhelmed by despair despite the burden of this time is because of a third fire โ€” โ€œour fire.โ€ She ticked off a number of movements unleashing the power of people against the fires of hate and climate change, from the more than 4 million climate strikers last September to the global movement to divest from fossil fuels. The fire of these movements are what give Klein hope that the world will be up to the task of dampening the first twoย fires.ย 

Global Strike for Climate in Melbourne, Australia, September 20, 2019
The Global Strike for Climate in Melbourne, Australia, September 20, 2019.
ย Credit:ย julian meehan,ย CC BYย 2.0

โ€œWe need our fires to burn bright and hot enough to clear away all the debris standing in our way,โ€ she said, the debris of the deniers, the distractors, and theย doomers.ย 

This is where a reckoning and accountability on climate and coronavirus areย necessary.

โ€œMost of all, it needs to be hot enough to clear away the debris of the dividers, turning us against each other when we need to be more united, more powerful than we ever have been before,โ€ Kleinย concluded.ย 

This is where holding onto our humanity and each other comesย in.

โ€œFor the marathon weโ€™re facing, we need solidarity,โ€ infectious disease policy expert Alexandra Phelan of Georgetown University recently told The Atlantic.

Mary Annaรฏse Heglar has written about the parallels between climate and coronavirus grief. โ€œWe are suffering through a collective trauma. Weโ€™re watching our world change, and it feels like itโ€™s falling apart,โ€ she said. Weโ€™re mourning many losses right now: loved ones, health, freedom of movement, economic security, peace of mind, and so many gatherings โ€” graduations, vacations, funerals, weddings,ย reunions.ย 

We shouldnโ€™t expect to fully process this all by ourselves, and we shouldnโ€™t try. As psychologist Renee Lertzman has said, communities have found solace from ecological grief by finding safe spaces to talk about their losses together. The added kick these days is that we need to find ways to support each other from at least six feet, and sometimes a world,ย apart.

So, what kind of humans are we going to be in the months and years to come? Will we drop off groceries for vulnerable neighbors, prioritize medical supplies to those who need them most, invest in a just transition away from polluting energy sources, and expand healthcare to better take care of ourselves and ourย planet?

Will we support the journalists holding the powerful accountable? We will support each other in holding onto ourย humanity?

Covering Climate Now logoHere at DeSmog, weโ€™re doing our best to rise to the occasion. Seven months and a lifetime later, weโ€™re once again participating in the global journalistic collaboration known as Covering Climate Now to highlight climate solutions 50 years after the first Earth Day. Our climate solutions reporting will look a lot like the type of climate accountability reporting we do day in and dayย out.

But, then again, I would argue that we canโ€™t get to a healthier, more livable climate withoutย it.

Read more of DeSmog’s Covering Climate Now stories on Climateย Solutions.

Main image: Sunset through the smoke from British Columbia wildfires over Elliott Bay, Seattle, August 2017. Credit: Crop of image byย chelsealwood,ย CC BYSAย 2.0

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Ashley is Senior Editor of DeSmog. She is also a freelance science and environmental journalist, and a contributing science writer for Natural History Magazine. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, Slate, Science, Scientific American, Discover Magazine, Hakai Magazine, and Medium.

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