pandemic – Climate Justice Now

What Now? Reflecting on 2020

Francesca Von Krauland COVID-19, Global Future, Racial Justice December 19, 2020December 19, 20202020, business, future, pandemic, politics, social justice, sustainability

There are a few weeks left of 2020. They might take a few days, or perhaps another few months, to pass—time didn’t move quite logically this year. It seems like a lot of people just want to fast forward through to get to 2021, a year still full with the hope that the vaccine will bring everything back to normal. I’d like to make a counterproposal: what if instead of wishing away what was for most people a bizarre year, we stop for a moment and look back at it? And what if instead of wishing for a return to the normal, we embrace the good that comes of change?

2020 was the year of COVID, of race protests, of isolation, one of the most dramatic U.S. elections in living memory. It was the year of the unprecedented. The borders closed between European countries for the first time since the establishment of the European Union. The border between the U.S. and Europe closed for the first time ever—and seems to be staying that way. Everything we accepted as normal, the good and the bad, tore away to reveal a messy, imperfect world. It’s a dark planet, but even from space it glitters with the lights of all our cities, grids connecting billions of people’s lives and stories. Perhaps in this year’s darkness the lights shone even brighter, because there was so much good in 2020, too.

This year, global conflict became unavoidably personal for everyone. This article phrases it perfectly, “In some ways, the pandemic has been a dress rehearsal for the climate crisis. Human beings throughout the world have been called upon to embrace science, change their lifestyles and make sacrifices for the common good.” This year was about awareness—maybe that’s why Americans’ concern about the climate crisis rose from 44% to an all-time high of 60% this year. Perhaps they realized that it’s no coincidence emissions dropped 9% at the same time that travel and consumption slowed—the biggest yearly drop on record. Though emissions are expected to increase again next year, they still won’t be higher than any year since 1990. Yet another reason this year’s timeline feels off: in some ways we’ve been time traveling. In San Francisco, traffic levels across the Golden Gate Bridge fell to levels similar to the 1950s, resulting in coyotes wandering across. The drop in noise from our usually bustling cities caused a change in bird song: “While it might have seemed to human ears that bird song got louder, the sparrows actually sang more quietly,” explains Dr. Elizabeth Derryberry of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

We also moved forward in time, making huge and exciting progress toward the future of global energy, renewables. During shutdowns, with reduced demand for power, grid operators relied more on cheaper renewable energy sources, and almost 10% of electricity generation in most parts of the world were sourced from renewable energy sources. Denmark, already a leader in wind energy, just announced that it will stop providing licenses for oil exploration in the North Sea, preventing the extraction of about 150 million barrels of oil by 2050. The plan, which Climate and Energy Minister Dan Jorgensen announced as a historic step toward a fossil-free future that will “resonate around the world,” was created as an economic response to the pandemic.

So with the present as an exciting conglomeration of the future and past, all de-familiarized by the fact that we’re still living through it, I ask…now what? What does the future need to look like, across government, business, and society, to create a clean and just world? In the United States, leaders would do well to learn from Nordic countries, China and India, and Sub-Saharan Africa. President-elect Biden’s outline of some of his climate goals, including rejoining the Paris Agreement, is cause for hope, but the support of the judiciary, in addition to the executive and lawmakers, is necessary. Globally, a total of 1,587 cases of climate litigation have been brought between 1986 and mid-2020: 1,213 cases in the U.S. and 374 cases in 36 other countries and eight regional or international jurisdictions. These numbers are increasing rapidly, and according to this LSE study, “These cases play an important supporting role in ensuring the national implementation of international emissions-reduction commitments, the alignment of national laws with the Paris Agreement, and the enforcement of laws and policies relating to climate resilience.” This year, in the U.S., a federal judge ruled that the highly controversial Dakota Access Pipeline be shut down because federal officials failed to adequately analyze the project’s environmental impact. Also this year, in Portugal, six young people filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, demanding accountability from 33 top-emitting countries for the climate crisis and that funds for economic restoration from the pandemic are spent in a way that ensures a rapid transition to renewable energy. While individual executive leadership is important, the role of other branches of government, and of international organizations, cannot be dismissed.

Change on a government level is infamously slow—passing progressive plans through multiple levels of bureaucracy and special interests can hardly be the only way to enact change, though it’s undoubtedly an important one. Businesses also have a role to play in ensuring a rapid transition to sustainability. From simplifying global supply chains to replacing physical structures with digital platforms, businesses occupy a unique position that enables not just rapid reaction to shifting norms but also the ability to spearhead change. One hundred companies are responsible for 71% of greenhouse gas emissions, and massive corporations must be accountable for their impact on the planet. In this area, there is good news. Walmart has cut 230 million metric tons of greenhouse gases out of its supply chain in the past three years, Uniliver vowed to replace the petrochemicals found in its detergents and household cleaners with renewable or recycled alternatives, Apple committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2030, and Lyft said 100% of its trips will be in electric vehicles within the decade. In the realm of startups and investors, a changing mindset is even more evident. Green startups are more common than ever, reimagining everything from how nitrogen fertilizer is created for global agriculture to how to simultaneously reduce food waste and hunger.

More than simply building back better, we need to build back equal, creating social change that reduces inequality as we focus on green growth. What a just transition entails varies by country, depending on the place’s particular culture, norms, and historical legacies, so there is no one solution to be prescribed in order to ensure equality and effective reform everywhere. But there is one commonality, one overarching goal we must keep in mind as the world pulls itself out of this chaotic year, and this unsustainable epoch of human history: what comes next is entirely up to us. The actions that governments, businesses, and individuals take now will affect everyone for generations to come. There is only one global climate future—the one whose foundations are being built by the decisions we make today.

Featured image from La Croix

Mental Health and Activism in 2020

Francesca Von Krauland COVID-19, Global Future, Racial Justice, Uncategorized December 16, 2020December 16, 2020activism, black lives matter, climate change, mental health, pandemic, racial justice

Earlier this year, the previous Climate Justice Now blogger, Dominique, wrote an article entitled Taking Care of Yourself and the Environment. As 2020 winds down, I think mental health, especially as it relates to activism, the events of this year, and racial factors, is an important topic to readdress. No one’s life was unaffected by COVID-19, but rather than giving into the despair that sometimes accompanies massive upheaval, many people focused on working toward positive change in areas they felt more control over—addressing racial injustice, making progress in the climate movement, and (particularly in the U.S.) political campaigning to ensure that we have forward-thinking leaders to guide us into the next year.

While admirable as a coping mechanism, and a necessary part of creating change to protect others in the future, those who engage in activism often experience adverse mental health effects because of their work. Often, the issues that people fight for are deeply personal, fueled by identity and trauma. Having such a stake in the outcome of one’s work makes for powerful activism, but also poses a threat to the emotional stability of those who engage in it. Activists are at a higher risk of developing PTSD and suicidal ideation when their identities are wrapped up in the causes they champion, and even those whose identities aren’t experience vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue, which also pose a risk. This organization points out that movements struggle to hold onto their most passionate, committed activists because of burnout. For people who make careers out of activism, the effects are magnified: the hectic schedules and low pay associated with activism can result in stress from familial tension, a lack of access to medical services, and anxiety about the future in regards to retirement or even homeownership. Those in the field emphasize that addressing activist mental health is essential to the protection of both individuals as activists and the movements themselves.

While mental health has long been an issue in relation to activism, this year, with the added stress of the pandemic and all of its associated disruptions, our collective mental state is perhaps more precarious than ever. The WHO explains, “Fear, worry, and stress are normal responses to perceived or real threats, and at times when we are faced with uncertainty or the unknown. So it is normal and understandable that people are experiencing fear in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.” In addition to the very-valid fear of microscopic particles floating about, ready to send any non-mask wearing person to the ICU, there’s the added burden of isolation from all the joys of life that usually help with coping: seeing family and friends over a meal, working out at the gym, and browsing one’s favorite stores, for example. Added to this, the fact that unemployment is rising, many people have lost loved ones to the virus, and living situations are altered, the rise in anxiety, depression, substance abuse, insomnia, and other mental health conditions is unsurprising. To compound the issue, the pandemic has disrupted or halted critical mental health services in 93% of countries worldwide at a time when they are most needed. As Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, urges, “World leaders must move fast and decisively to invest more in life-saving mental health programmes—during the pandemic and beyond.”

As the sun sets earlier and people retreat indoors, people who struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) are more at risk than ever of experiencing overwhelming symptoms of low energy, poor mood, and social withdrawal, among others. Dr. Desan of Yale Medicine states, ““We are seeing an obvious increase in the number of people seeking help for anxiety, and that’s not unreasonable. People are anxious about catching COVID-19, among other related issues,” Dr. Desan says. “This is a major mental health event.”

As with most other major issues, the collective suffers, but a particular segment of the population feels the effects most acutely. On the topics of both mental health as it relates to activism and mental health during the pandemic, while U.S. adults reported considerably elevated adverse mental health conditions this year, younger adults, racial/ethnic minorities, essential workers, and unpaid adult caregivers reported having experienced disproportionately worse mental health outcomes, according to the CDC. Particularly for people of color, who this year led the Black Lives Matter movement through emotional protests deeply tied to their identity, heightened rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide compound the pressures associated with the discrimination they protest in the first place, in addition to the pandemic, and the climate-related problems, and so much more. It’s no wonder that the term self-care was coined by black woman activist Audre Lorde when she famously said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” After a year like 2020, everyone, but especially those most impacted, must look after themselves—starting with mental health.

The language we use for particularly successful activists—”champions” of a cause—reveals the underlying psychology that fuels the mental health problem in activist movements. Linda Sarsour, one of the founders of the Women’s March and a Muslim Palestinian-American activist, says, “Activists often become caricatures to people, for some even super-human. Many don’t realize the deep depression and anxiety we experience. The work is overwhelming and [it’s] compounded by not feeling safe and worrying about your life and the lives of your children.” Recognizing that caring deeply for the world is a kind of emotional labor that taxes the mind and body is a good first step in the direction of protecting one’s mental health. Next, mental health care needs to be made more accessible to everyone, especially those from marginalized communities who most need it. And finally, until then, the most powerful tools activists, and anyone struggling with mental health has, is self-care.

Dominique’s blog wisely recommends that people feeling overwhelmed spend time in nature, reach out to others, and “remember that anxiety is rooted in love for the people and places in your life.” I think that last one is particularly important—gratitude is perhaps the strongest cure for despair. It is a privilege to love something so deeply as to ache at its absence, its obscuring. Acknowledging that pain is often rooted in one’s ability to imagine better means that hurting and hoping go hand in hand. This is the power of language: we can rephrase the problem. 2020 changed almost everything for almost everyone. This is a time of opportunity, not of crisis. We’ve ripped the bandage off of a wounded world and it burns. The world in 2020 is a messy gash with still-drying blood, but without the bandage, we can imagine what the skin will feel like when it’s healed.

Healing, despite its poetry, is a science. The world will not heal with hope and imagination alone—certainly, those need to be there, along with despair at how things are now, but most of all, we need science. Thought and logic and clear-headedness drives movements. Science makes up vaccines and holds the solution to climate change. Logic battles the judgement we have for the parts of us that are struggling: what is more logical a reaction to the horrors of 2020 than to, in fact, feel horror? And then to acknowledge it, and then to channel the horror into yet more logic, that needed to solve the problem. All is not as it should be—but only because the work isn’t quite done yet. We’re getting there. Painfully, hopefully, and with science and gratitude.

Featured Image from AmGen

Climate Migration: A Cause and Effect

Francesca Von Krauland COVID-19, Global Future November 15, 2020November 15, 2020climate change, COVID-19, human rights, migration, natural disasters, pandemic, refugees

We watched the events of this year unfold from our couches. News of the pandemic’s spread had most of the population home and baking, breaking out board games and books to alleviate boredom. When election week got too stressful, or we read about yet another jihadist attack, or another Black American’s arrest gone disturbingly wrong, or the latest statistics on worsening climate change, we fought back with activism, yes, but also with self care. We watch the news on our couches, with our loved ones, light scented candles and buy another fluffy blanket as the cold weather sets in, as we contemplate the world’s most deeply rooted inequities. It is our right—self care is crucial to sustaining mental health so that we have the energy to keep fighting for change. But it’s also a luxury denied to the very people we fight for. As we munch on our homemade sourdough starters and shake our heads at the latest “presidential” tweet, there are people around the world who are so affected by global events that they lose, rather than retreat to, the homes they want to feel just as safe in as we do ours. Migrants and refugees have been a historical reality as long as the concept of borders has existed, but the causes of flight, the perils of that process, and its longterm ramifications are now more interconnected and alarming than ever.

In my most recent articles, I examined the links between climate change and natural disasters like droughts, hurricanes, and wildfires. Events like these, but also places with conditions of less immediacy, which nonetheless experience the effects of a changing climate, make many of the world’s most vulnerable places unlivable, resulting in migration. Such migration can occur within a country but also across national borders and even across continents. These movements and influxes of large, heterogeneous groups of migrants and refugees are both caused by environmental degradation and often unwitting contributors to that very same process. Yet despite, and perhaps because of this vicious cycle, humanitarian efforts to support these groups, especially during a global pandemic, are more crucial both to the wellbeing of migrants and to the environment than perhaps ever before.

While migration can be spurred by a variety of push and pull factors, when one examines the climate/environment as a catalyst for movement, there are several main causes, as outlined in this study. Migration induced by environmental disasters, like those mentioned above, is one. Migration caused by longterm environmental degradation, like resource strain due to overpopulation, is another main cause. Finally, long term effects of climate change like rising sea levels and shifts in disease patterns due to changes in weather regimes and temperature change also drives migration.

While the idea of migration might most readily bring to mind the entrance and assimilation of large groups from political conflict areas into the West, the reality of migration is nuanced, occurring over vastly different timelines and over varying geographic scales. Whether the movement is international or simply regional, the amount of people migrating, the reason for their migration, and the resources available for their support upon arrival all have ramifications both for the environment in the receiving territory and for the migrants themselves. Studies of internal migration show that “settlement into marginal and fragile ecosystems in [Least Developed countries] have led to desertification, deforestation and other environmental degradation.” Another study finds that migration from developing to developed countries causes an absolute increase in global emissions not just from the process of movement but also from environmental damage in the areas in which they settle. In developed countries, this means increased total emissions as migrant populations settle into the energy consumption patterns associated with higher income level urban areas, as well as loss of biodiversity, soil quality, deforestation, water pollution, and deterioration of natural areas responsible for carbon sequestration for migrants who settle in and develop more rural areas. These problems make living in migrant settled areas difficult not just for existing local populations but also for the migrants themselves.

The environmental problems in connection with the multiple stages of migration result from a lack of efficient management and planning. Understandably, the immediate wellbeing of refugee populations is the priority, but approaching the task of planning a refugee settlement cannot be dictated by short-term goals when such settlements are often longterm establishments, existing on average for 17 years. This is long enough to irreversibly damage the local environment of the settlement. Camp overcrowding, while a humanitarian issue, is also an environmental one, as local water and tree supplies diminish dangerously. The UNHCR created a tool to assess environmental impact in 2005, yet the focus remains on a “curative” rather than prevention-oriented approach. In some places, if the potential financial and social burden of supporting refugees does not dissuade a host country from accepting refugees, the damage to the environment that persists long after might act as a disincentive for aid. This article points out that after examining case studies in rural camps like that of 80,000 Nigerian refugees in Northern Cameroon and Syrian refugee camps in urban Lebanon, it is clear that “despite the gradual introduction of the term “environment” as a cross-cutting issue in policies and strategies, environmental issues are generally perceived as being separate from the humanitarian sector…humanitarian crises can have a significant impact on the natural environment, particularly when these are prolonged crises.”

Migration, whether for political, environmental, or other reasons, is predicted to increase in the coming decades, but it must do so in a way that protects both the displaced groups and their destinations. Establishing new urban centers in migratory destinations is one proposed sustainable solution. As a whole, planning and facilitating migration as a lifesaving option for vulnerable groups that does not jeopardize future environmental health must be prioritized in the conversation on migration, not just in addition to humanitarian aims but as a humanitarian aim in itself.

This year, the pandemic raised many questions about borders, international rights, and the priorities of governments. Within weeks of COVID-19’s spread across the globe, travel between the Unites States and Europe, and indeed between European countries, halted—and still has not been completely restored. In difficult times, the instinct of many is to protect those closest to them: family, neighbors, those with the same nationality. Asylum procedures were similarly disrupted. Displaced people became some of the most vulnerable to exposure to the virus due to cramped living conditions and shared resources, and their need was more urgent than ever. The pandemic serves as a powerful reminder of the world’s connectedness, but also of how differently people experience the same problems. Climate change causes migration, which causes environmental degradation and furthers the spread of the virus, which might lead to more inaction on climate change as leaders struggle to deal with the most immediate global issues at the direct expense of ongoing ones; it’s a brutal cycle that can only be broken with empathy, knowledge, and planning.

Featured Image from Climate and Migration Coalition

Orange Skies

Francesca Von Krauland COVID-19, Global Future November 1, 2020November 1, 2020climate change, economy, natural disasters, pandemic, sustainability, wildfires

There’s something unsettling about the virus, this seemingly inescapable, omnipresent, insidious force that keeps us locked in our homes. Some people almost wished for a tangible enemy, something obvious and terrifying but at the very least visible, so that they could justify the sacrifices and fear. The universe granted that wish in a very 2020 way—wildfires swept the west coast with the same force that the Australian wildfires did way, way back in January of this year. Suddenly, the sky was like something out of Dante’s Inferno, and you could taste the smoke particles floating in the air even through a face mask. The landscape matched the gathering feeling of apocalypse, and new numbers, like 4 million burned acres, joined the statistics we sing ourselves to sleep with: 45.1 million global COVID-19 infections, 230,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States eight months and counting of using the phrase ‘unprecedented times.’ An article written by Stanford University student Nestor Walters on the wildfires poses the question: “How many more times do we need to hear words like trying, tumultuous or challenging as adjectives to times before we accept that these are simply the times we live in?”

No one can escape it—not the wildfires, not the pandemic, and not climate change. Rozzi, an American pop singer, released a ballad called “Orange Skies” about the wildfires in her hometown of San Francisco. She said of the song, “Despite the massiveness of the issue, I knew I wanted to make the song personal – because of course the underlying issue itself is personal. Climate change isn’t some mythical thing happening to other people, in other places – it’s happening right now, right outside our doors.”

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk reports 7,348 wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, droughts, and heatwaves over the past 20 years. These natural disasters resulted in the deaths of 1.23 million people, affecting a total of 4.2 billion people, and caused $2.97 trillion in global economic losses. Most effected are China and the United States. The report unequivocally links these events to the rising global temperature as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, and finds that any improvements to disaster response or climate adaptation will be “obsolete in many countries” if climate change, the source of the problem, is not immediately addressed.

So how does climate change cause forest fires? National Geographic explains that as temperatures rise due to climate change, the hot air “soaks up water from whatever it touches—plants (living or dead) and soil, lakes and rivers. The hotter and drier the air, the more it sucks up, and the amount of water it can hold increases exponentially as the temperature rises; small increases in the air’s heat can mean big increases in the intensity with which it pulls out water.” In California, the rise in temperature is about 3 degrees Fahrenheit, far above the global average of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat combines with parched forest material, which is even dryer due to a persistent drought more intense than any for the past 1,200 years, producing the ideal conditions for a fire to consume forests, in addition to all of the settlements that have increasingly encroached among traditionally undeveloped lands.

Some preventive measures exist, though actual implementation by governments and industry varies. In Australia, nomadic aboriginal groups used to practice surface vegetation burning to prevent outbreaks of fire. Though indigenous populations can no longer engage in that tradition, the method is still emulated by local governments. Urban planning in Australia—where the 2019/2020 season was the hottest on record and driest for 120 years—must prevent expansion into flammable wildland areas, include vegetation-free zones around properties, use fireproof building materials, and plan evacuation and rescue routes in advance. In California, controlled burning of dry brush and excess debris is a common practice, though it contributes to air pollution. Currently, timber companies and biomass industries do not substantially support the state’s fire prevention strategy, so reducing costs of thinning projects would create better incentives for participation on an industry level. Additionally, as in Australia, building codes should emphasize fire-resistance and developing into high-risk areas should be banned. As a whole, these measures could reduce short term damage, but would address only the symptoms of the problem, rather than the problem itself. Unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, and the warming of the Earth slows, these practices will not suffice.

Economically, the stakes are high for leaders to respond effectively. California Governor Gavin Newsom announced investments in the CAL FIRE air fleet, early wildfire warning technologies, fire detection cameras, and permanent firefighting positions, along with related crisis counseling, legal services, and housing and unemployment assistance for people affected by the fires. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, on the other hand, was widely criticized for his slow response to the wildfires, though he did expressly link them to climate change—a link that the Australian Finance Minister denied. Though Australia has pledged to reduce its emissions by between 26 and 28% within the next decade, a UN report noted that few of the Conservative government’s policies are designed to reach this target. Studies on the economic impact of wildfires on affected areas show that “large wildfires lead to instability in local labor markets by amplifying seasonal variation in employment over the subsequent year” and that rural areas in particular struggle to recover. Even without the pandemic-induced recession, effects last months and even years in places like rural Oregon. Short term economic gains as local laborers rebuild are overshadowed by the slow economic growth that follows as tourism, logging, and other essential industries drop.

It’s been an overwhelming year, but the pandemic, the wildfires, and climate change are nothing new. We are experiencing the colliding effects of problems we as a global society created and then ignored, until a virus halted civilization and the skies turned orange. The problem isn’t invisible, it’s in everything: it’s the fuel that runs the world we are literally watching burn. But we still have time, just a tiny bit of time, to turn things around, and to lower our emissions by switching to renewable energy, and to rebuild a post-pandemic society sustainably. Nestor Walters puts it best: “We don’t own the past or future; all we have is now. We can’t let hope take away our now, or we’ll find ourselves looking out the window one morning, wondering if the sky used to be blue.”

Featured Image from Bloomberg

Rebuilding Sustainably

Francesca Von Krauland COVID-19, Global Future October 13, 2020October 13, 2020business, pandemic, public policy, recovery, renewables

When the world went into lockdown earlier this year, and the streets and skies were emptied of their usual polluting noisiness, people enthusiastically counted a decrease in environmental degradation as the one positive outcome of the pandemic. For anyone still doubting it, the drop in emissions proved that humans are responsible for climate change, but also that nature is resilient and flourishes again the moment human interference is diminished. We can learn from the societal changes we saw during the pandemic in order to develop policies that will stimulate the rebuilding of the economy with sustainability in mind, so long as the temptation of short-term fixes doesn’t distract and further entrench harmful and outdated practices.

“Epidemiologists have long warned that the characteristics of today’s global society (e.g. shifts in and destruction of wild habitats, greater global interconnectedness, high-density in large urban centres) increase the risk of future pandemics, even if no one could predict when one would happen,” reports an OECD article on the coronavirus and policy responses. Clearly, the causes of the pandemic and climate change have significant overlap, but that certainly doesn’t mean that the pandemic on its own will make a huge impact in solving the environmental crisis. Early on in the pandemic, the IEA predicted that there would be a 6% drop in energy demand in 2020, “wiping off five years of demand growth.” Another source traced monthly decreases of CO2 emissions by sector, emphasizing how surface transport accounted for half of the 17% drop at the time of the study. Both sources, however, agree that temporary, lockdown-induced improvements are not enough, a mere drop in the ocean of the improvements that need to happen for the effects of climate change to be reversed. Also, this is not even the first crisis to have a temporary positive impact—the 2008 Global Financial Crisis also caused a short drop in emissions, which was then followed by an even greater growth in subsequent years. It’s not the lockdown that has the biggest effect, but the policies that we decide to implement following the lockdowns.

These policies should correspond to the changes we saw that were effective in decreasing environmental degradation during the lockdown. Before the pandemic, companies like Deloitte, which flew its consultants out to locations around the country on a weekly basis, were the top customers of airlines like Delta and United. After having switched to remote work during the pandemic, such companies have realized how much more effective and profitable decreasing business travel can be. Even now, office buildings in Manhattan stand mostly empty, meaning that the energy required to operate these buildings, to transport workers to and from their offices, and to fly for business trips are all being saved. With an increased emphasis on remote work, it’s possible that companies will lean toward shortening global supply chains and growing online, which would also decrease emissions from shipping—one of the top causes of pollution globally.

As of right now, the positive impact on the environment is incremental when compared to the massive economic problems the lockdowns have resulted in. As a result, it might be hard to see why prioritizing the environment would be important as policymakers and businesses struggle to rebuild. There are a few key actions that might be helpful to the economy in the short term that would create long term damage to the environmental progress we’ve made, like dismantling carbon markets, lowering vehicle fuel efficiency standards, or just generally weakening existing environmental policy enforcement in order to cut costs. Also, other potential issues include a drop in investment in renewable energy due to the recent drop in oil prices, and the longer period before returns characteristic of some renewables, in addition to a decrease in innovation from smaller firms that usually spearhead progress but who were harder hit during the pandemic.

The European Green Deal, first presented last December, is being incorporated into the regrowth of the European economy following the first wave of the pandemic. Countries like Sweden are committing to financially supporting “green job” creation to reduce unemployment within a green stimulus package. Europe is serving as a model for how to transition from an unsustainable, pre-pandemic economy to one that suits the modern needs of recovering from the economic blows of the pandemic while addressing the urgency of climate change. The goals of the European Green Deal include:

-No net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050
-Economic growth is decoupled from resource use
-No person and no place is left behind

They specify that these goals will be reached by:
-Investing in environmentally-friendly technologies
-Supporting industry to innovate
-Rolling out cleaner, cheaper and healthier forms of private and public transport
-Decarbonising the energy sector
-Ensuring buildings are more energy efficient
-Working with international partners to improve global environmental standards

In the United States, meanwhile, talk of the Green New Deal largely fizzled out after it was defeated in the Senate in 2019. Progressive climate policy cannot continue to be regarded in the U.S. as idealistic, something to perhaps be pursued in some distant future when the need will be greater. The pandemic revealed the extent of our impact on the climate, and our own globalized world forced us to slow down and rapidly dismantle much of what we built, and what we had planned for. The only way forward that addresses the joint cause of the pandemic and of climate change is a focus on sustainability and climate justice as we rebuild our shared world.

Featured Image by The Economic Times

Written by Francesca von Krauland, Columbia University Masters Student in Global Thought and Climate Justice Now Intern.

There’s No Vaccine for Climate Change

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future October 9, 2020October 9, 2020businesses, climate change, deaths, environment, facemask, global, local, pandemic

Everything is connected—the world is woven together by invisible threads of causation and carelessness, effects and unintended consequences.

People tend to collapse the world when they imagine it. An American envisioning India, for example, might have a pretty homogenous view of the country, but even someone living in New Delhi inhabits only a small segment of a full reality comprised of a layered social system, an economy, a fraught history, and the lives of millions of people. People get caught up in the immeasurability of community, religion, nationality, and race and how they overlap in so many unique ways, making it difficult to pick up the threads of a global problem in a local community, or conversely to trace local priorities across transnational boundaries.

The difficulty of scale is apparent now more than ever, and as a global problem, the pandemic works its way into every single community in the world. From our homes, we watch our favorite local bookstores and cafes go out of business, we watch our neighbors grow tomatoes for the first time in their front garden, we watch the local supermarket stock packages of disposable face masks by the entrance. These things feel more real than the news that the U.S. has reached 100,000, now 200,000, now 218,000 deaths. More real than the nearly 900,000 people currently infected in India, certainly.

The local/global scale perspective problem isn’t limited to the pandemic. It’s the defining feature of climate change, too. The world as a whole contributes to the worsening of the global environment but the impacts are felt locally in countless different ways. Wildfires and hurricanes are more prevalent than ever, causing life-changing catastrophes for thousands, if not millions, of people. The water level rises down in South Beach, near where I grew up, so that there is almost constant construction on the streets that trace the beaches and canals, always to raise them just a few more inches against the floods that don’t always need rain anymore to spill over.

There’s a quote that’s been floating around on social media: There’s no vaccine for climate change. People have been wearing face masks against the smoke from polluted air since before the pandemic, and should we be so fortunate as to find a cure for COVID-19, people will continue wearing their masks against air pollution after the virus has abated. This is the new normal, right? Except it’s not new, and it’s not something we should accept as normal. Now, nestled away at home in our own communities, we have time to think, to reevaluate how our lives and decisions support a global system that is killing not the Earth but its most prolific inhabitants, humans. Now is the time to tie together the knowledge of what’s happening and rebuild.

This sounds overwhelming, and challenging, and exhausting, because when something is too big and miraculous or terrible to comprehend or verbalize, people focus on the small, and so it is often the small things which count more so than the big. Focus on the small, then—what can you do in your life, yes, during the pandemic, yes, during the most political turbulent time in our lives, yes, despite the fatigue of emotionally dealing with these realities, to better the world?

Small things. Wear a washable, reusable face covering instead of one that will end up in a landfill or strangle wildlife. Buy local produce to reduce emissions from shipping, and if you safely can, eat at or order food directly from local restaurants, instead of ordering food through UberEats or other companies that take a percentage of profits from small businesses already struggling to pay rent.

I know it’s difficult to balance the world’s needs with your own. I typed out ideas for this article while under the heating lamps of a cafe in Paris, where I’m based this Autumn. Those warm, glowing contraptions that make the tables that spill out onto the sidewalk so inviting—the idea being to heat the literal outdoors—were going to be banned in the city starting this year due to their environmental impact, but because of the pandemic, the policy was postponed a year so that restaurants can keep people outside and reduce contact. Hence, my face is as warm as the steaming cup of coffee before me as I ponder questions of how to not kill the planet. We do what we can in an imperfect world.

That’s why it would be tempting to add, don’t order from corporations like Amazon, which doubled its profits during the pandemic, but Amazon in particular has actually been somewhat proactive in minimizing the harm it causes, creating 175,000 new jobs, distributing a $500 million bonus to its frontline workers and partners, and increasing its hourly wages. Whether this balances out the cost to the environment and to local businesses is for you to decide, but perhaps corporations are more aggressive about creating positive change than other powerful entities, like the government, because sometimes they have a financial incentive to do so.

It would seem that governments and corporations have the power to influence the course of the pandemic, as well as of climate change, on every level from the international to the local. Individuals have a more direct influence on the local level, but also have the power to vote both in political elections (like this November—make sure you’ve registered!) and with where they choose to spend money. The local and global, and indeed, the pandemic and climate change, are more interconnected than they seem.

How people value those around them impacts how they perceive and interact with the world. Each person must strive to value the small: every individual is capable of planting a tree, and also of being a virus super-spreader. In addition, each person must attempt to grapple with the big: the forces of history that seem to, but can never fully, overshadow the small, that led to the globalized system that made the spread of the virus and the level of industrialization that is fundamentally altering the environment possible. The world is both too big and too small for human comprehension, but action is still possible, and necessary.

Featured image from Hydroinformatics Institute

Written by Francesca Von Krauland, Columbia University Masters Student in Global Thought and Climate Justice Now Intern.

From Disruption Comes Creation

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future October 6, 2020October 6, 2020climate change, COVID, future, global, pandemic, quarantine, science

As bodies packed together, a mass of glitter, champagne and excitement, to welcome in the new year and new decade just ten months ago, no one thought that such a scene would be unthinkable so soon after. Even then, the virus was beginning to spread. In the coming months, flights would be cancelled, sports seasons called off, museums, theme parks, and universities closed. All the noise and movement, the hallmarks of normalcy in our society, ceased.

It was science, meticulous building and testing and perfecting and creating, that built this complex, shared, unsustainable world. It was science—the way that a virus shuts down a body, lingers on surfaces, spreads to other bodies—that made it impossible for the world to continue as it was. And it was science, or more precisely, the system of technological communication that people have designed, that alerted everyone of the need to shut everything down.

So, the world went home. And at home, people went online. We looked inwards, but we also looked to each other, and the way we did it is a testament to the success of modern technology in creating a new realm for social interaction. People also turned to gardening, cooking, and bread baking as ways to pass the countless hours at home. These, too, are a science: an older kind, a timeless kind, chemicals interacting with chemicals in the heat of a seldom used oven. People rediscovered their own ability to make things, to grow things, as the world slowed down in quarantine. But not everyone was at home and online. More than ever, essential workers relied on technology to hold up what remained of the societal infrastructure. Factories continued, despite multiple outbreaks among workers, to produce and deliver goods to grocery stores. Drivers from food delivery apps dropped food directly at the houses of people who couldn’t safely enter supermarkets. Doctors used ventilators to keep patients with the virus breathing. The phrase “essential worker” was popularized, but each group relied on essential technologies to keep the population fed, home, and safe.

The workings of science did more than just sustain. They also inspired. At the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, NASA launched its first manned commercial rocket, marking the beginning of a new era of space travel. People from around the world watched onscreen as science made something so seemingly magical and otherworldly happen. It was a reminder that it is still possible for people all around the world, all of whom are impacted by the pandemic, to look up at the sky and dream of a future, and to feel proud of what science can achieve.

Science and fiction may have blurred when some articles about nature’s rebirth as a result of the pandemic were popularized, like that of dolphins returning to Venetian canals, but there was some fact in the coverage, too. Pollution levels dipped internationally, if only for a while, demonstrating how intrusive the processes are that fuel our pre-pandemic society. But nature is equally uncompromising in its determination to thrive, and after only a few weeks demonstrated the resilience of its ancient processes. Nature is a reminder that scientific achievement predates humanity.

It’s all science, our lives and societies. Science is behind our education and entertainment, supports our creativity and both fuels and is fueled by the limits of our imaginations. Yet nothing served as so potent a reminder about the human relationship to science as the virus itself. The pandemic showed that despite our ability to create and imagine, and despite the complexity of modern life, people are still just bodies, capable of contracting and spreading microscopic particles that in weeks can bring our world to a halt. No single body can be separated from the vast network in which it operates, and it is our interconnection that makes us so vulnerable. Society flourishes and crumbles around the resilience of our very fallible human forms, which scientists don’t yet fully understand.

Science, ideally, is behind the policies that states adopt to combat the spread of the virus. In much of Europe, public policies informed by science prevented countless infections. In other countries, like the U.S., a denial of the scientifically proven efficacy of masks and a refusal to follow social distancing guidelines has resulted in the highest infection rate on the globe. The outcry against the dangers of COVID-19 echoes that of the climate change deniers. If nothing else, science should be valued for its ability to save lives.

The past few months have given us cause to reevaluate every part of society: our healthcare infrastructure, the way that businesses and governments, from the local to national level, function, the role of international organizations like the WHO, and our values as individuals and as one global collective. The pandemic revealed the flaws and weaknesses in a system that has been plowing forward, slowing for nothing and no one, since the Industrial Revolution. Now, we have a unique opportunity to rebuild every area of society. Sustainability must be the ideology that guides our recovery, with the science of climate justice underlying every decision as we go forward. In the blog posts that follow, I want to more closely examine the global perspectives on the future of climate progress. I hope to inspire readers to think about how sustainability and social equity are interrelated concepts that should be built into every aspect of our shared future. The atmosphere has no boundaries, and neither should our solutions, in this one, shared world. We are experiencing a moment of disruption—next comes creation.

Featured image from Diplomatist

Written by Francesca Von Krauland, Columbia University Masters Student in Global Thought and Climate Justice Now Intern.