A CRISIS urgently needs solving. Science can provide the tools to help, but we must be willing to change our lifestyles. Solutions will be very expensive, yet the cost of inaction is even higher.
This isn鈥檛 the first time we have drawn parallels between climate change and the coronavirus pandemic. We first did so in our leader of 7 March 2020, when total global cases of covid-19 numbered fewer than 100,000, and there was as yet officially no pandemic. 鈥淲e are facing a global emergency, and politicians who appear to not believe in science are putting us all at risk,鈥� we said back then.
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The difference now is that we have seen what happens when we put our minds (and wallets) to tackling a global emergency. The development of multiple successful coronavirus vaccines in under a year is utterly astonishing 鈥� one that, while we鈥檙e keeping score, we got a little wrong, saying it would take at least 12 to 18 months.
As our special report on vaccines details, it has been a truly global effort, too. Over 4 billion doses have already been administered worldwide, though much more needs to be done to get jabs to people in lower-income countries.
鈥淭he coronavirus pandemic has shown we can take swift action when needed鈥�
We first mentioned climate change , in 1957. Even if humanity had only begun taking action at the turn of this century, a gradual change to how we work, live and travel would have been sufficient to counter the worst effects.
Now, as the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report says, we are afforded no such luxury. Even extremely rapid action is unlikely to be enough to avoid hitting the 1.5掳C of warming that global governments pledged to avoid at the Paris meeting in 2015. Current plans put us on track for a temperature rise of around 3掳C 鈥� and the catastrophic effects of the warming so far, of just over 1掳C, are becoming plain.
Yet, as we detailed in our special report on the new energy world last week, the solutions are within reach. The pandemic has shown we can take swift action when needed, even if it is costly. The upcoming COP26 meeting in the UK is the chance for the world to grasp the nettle and act once again in its own best interests.
