Re: Climate (2020.04)
Fifty years ago, millions of concerned citizens rallied on the first Earth Day as they called for a more thoughtful handling of this precious sphere we call home. This year, millions more will rally online as another generation calls for the same.
But whereas the first Earth Day in April 1970 focused on pollution, this year's event will highlight climate change and the plethora of problems it's causing.
The scope of those problems are, perhaps, a bit easier to comprehend now that we've seen how a single virus can upend human society. As I think about what we are going through with COVID-19 — as scary and devastating as it is — my hope is there are lessons we can learn, warnings we can heed and inspiration we can draw from our experience with this pandemic.
One lesson: We must heed the science. Society was slow to respond or even indifferent about empirical data as the virus spread. That failure to listen had real consequences. The same is true of the climate crisis; the longer we wait to take action, the worse the impacts will be.
Another lesson: We now know that society is capable of massive behavioral shifts across all sectors to meet a crisis head-on. Moreover, humans can be limitlessly innovative and are willing to make incredible sacrifices as we meet a challenge. Imagine all we could achieve if we applied this same urgency and creativity to combat the climate crisis.
While they might seem unrelated, the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis share many key similarities. Each arises in no small part from our unwillingness to respect the interdependence we share with ourselves and, more generally, the natural world at large.
To that end, the important work of land trusts can help us through today's fast-moving pandemic and tomorrow's slow-moving climate crisis. This work must accelerate in the years to come. Because rather than talk about pollution or climate change for the 100th Earth Day in 2070, I'd much rather we talk about all we did to conquer those challenges.
We need only band together. For in the words of climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, we already have the proper motivation.
"What really matters is the same for all of us. It's the health and safety of our friends, our family, our loved ones, our communities, our cities and our country. That's what the coronavirus threatens, and that's exactly what climate change does, too. The coronavirus crisis is devastating, but failing to tackle climate change because of the pandemic only compounds the tragedy. Instead, we must draw on the lessons of coronavirus to address the climate challenge."