Analysis: The Corona crisis undermines climate work

The tweet from a local branch of the British environmental group Extinction Rebellion immediately created headlines. There, the virus is hailed as a rescuer.

“The earth is healing. The air and the water clears. Corona is the cure! Man is the disease, ”it said on posters that then spread on Twitter. The management of the Extinction Rebellion distanced itself from the wording. But similar noises are heard in parts of the environmental movement.

In a major Boston Globe article, environmentalist Alan Weisman writes of "the pandemic as Mother Earth's revenge" a chronicle on the theme that corona is the revenge of nature. Also Inger Andersen, head of the UN environmental agency UNEP has said that "nature sends us a message with the corona pandemic - because we are exposing the planet to such great stress with devastating consequences".

But it is an expression of mythological thinking, that "nature" would act to punish people or teach us a lesson. Nature is not a synchronized force. It does not send any messages. Everything in nature happens randomly, no plan follows. 

What happened is that a virus jumped from animal to human. Because of our urbanized and globalized world, the unfortunate covid-19 spread to much of the world. It has proven to be insidious and interchangeable. But is corona a planetary emergency call that will shock the economic systems to change to green sustainability? No, say the political scientists who follow the debate, it is rather the opposite.

The climate crisis requires three global conditions for it to be resolved:

• Stable, modern governments that can work systematically to stimulate new, fossil-free energy solutions.
• A business that needs predictable and clear rules of play to dare to bet.
• A strong and trusting international climate cooperation.

All this has undermined the corona crisis, said recently the state scientist and professor Victor Galaz, at the Stockholm Resilience Center for SR's program "The Globe". International cooperation is at a freezing point. The countries that have led climate work, such as Germany and Sweden, must devote all their energy to saving lives and jobs and the business world must be forced to deal with chaos.

The cold fog over China has started to tighten again since the industries accelerated. And several EU countries now have no hesitation in investing money again on fossil-free energy technology because the corona pandemic consumes so much money.

The analyzes of what corona will mean for a more sustainable world are deeply contradictory. Still, many are delighted with the images of sudden blue skies, crystal clear seas and the animals that venture into the crowded cities. A kind of oasis of pleasure in the path of the pandemic.

And this week, the environmental movement was supported by a new research report which stated that only one species is responsible for covid-19, and that is human. Researchers behind the IPBES report on biological depletion on the planet, wrote that deforestation, uncontrolled expansion of agriculture, mining and growing cities crowded animals and people and created the perfect conditions for a pandemic.

The only thing everyone seems to agree on is that we need to build more resilient societies. Who can resist pandemics, climate crises and other things that threaten people's lives and health. This includes stopping the heating of the planet and the destruction of the last forests. The thousands of billions of SEK invested in supporting companies could be provided with a requirement specification that they should go to sustainable support efforts.

"Build Back Better," as UN Secretary General António Guterres recently called for.