We Need System Change to Avoid Climate Change

by Shapol Mohamed

(source: Unsplash)

I know, you must be exhausted by now of hearing comparisons between the current pandemic we are experiencing and <insert terrible moment in history here>. So that will be the last thing that I will write about. However, I haven’t seen many comparisons between the novel coronavirus with the future problems that await us, namely climate change.

I say climate change is a future problem but it is not just a problem for the future; it is a problem for the present too. This highlights the first similarity between the two stumbling-blocks for human progress and that is both are invisible. The majority of coronavirus patients show no symptoms once they have contracted it. The virus can not be detected by the patients, yet it is deadly. Likewise, many of the symptoms of climate change are hidden out of sight from us. The acidifying of oceans, a drastic drop in the number of bees, coral reef bleaching are all unnoticeable to most of us in the first world.

Unnoticeable it may be to us in the modern world however we are all in this together. Just like how we are in the same boat with the coronavirus, we are also under the same atmosphere. It will affect the whole world. We are all the problem and we are all the solution. As the German saying goes, we aren't in traffic but we are traffic - we are the problem. To decrease the impact of the coronavirus we can enact social distancing and to tackle climate change we can decrease our carbon footprint. In the media, we hear a plethora of content covering herd immunity, the equivalent to herd immunity in the fight against climate change is sustainability. This simple solution will protect us all.

Climate change might be concealed to us right now and we may see it as a distant problem but remember that Wuhan was once a distant problem too. We underestimated how close Wuhan to us is. Wuhan is not thousands of kilometres away from us - it is a few handshakes away. In comparison, climate change is not centuries away from us - it is right here right now banging on the door.

In parallel to one another, both problems have their epicentres in the US and China. The two world superpowers have experienced the most number of cases of COVID-19 and both are the biggest polluters in the world.

The number of casualties due to the coronavirus is approximately a quarter of a million and the World Health Organisation puts the same estimate on the annual number of casualties due to climate change. Both numbers will rise at an alarming rate if serious action is not taken. 1.5°C increase in the average global temperature might seem not very disturbing just like how “minor cough” may not seem very serious. Nevertheless, it is not just disturbing but is life-threatening.

Action needs to be taken so that we return to normal and continuing to see the Earth as only a money-making resource and the sky above us as a bottomless bin, to artificially inflate the next quarter's profits, with CEOs sitting in reality-proofed boardrooms comparing the size of their bonuses while begging for taxpayer bailouts but refusing to pay taxes themselves: no, thatʼs a “normal” we simply canʼt afford going back to. We need system change, not climate change.