Part II: Adjusting for The Future
What can we do to prevent crises like COVID-19 and Climate Threats in the future?
COVID-19 and climate change both challenge global institutions to rethink their strategies in addressing threats that have the power to cripple the world as we know it. The world has mobilized into action to battle COVID-19 and its effects, but the warnings for climate change have often been met with deferrals to future generations.
The proposed solutions sound hysterical. Until they don’t.
In the cases of both COVID-19 and climate change, the remedies can sound crazy at first. It’s remarkable how quickly populations around the world adapted to an entire new way of life of working from home, canceling all travel plans, practicing social distancing, washing hands regularly, and avoiding unnecessary trips outside except for emergencies and essential errands like buying food.
To fight the climate crisis, we are told we will need to reinvent the global economy, end fossil fuel use, transform the energy, farming, transportation, manufacturing, and building sectors, invent an entirely new suite of technologies and social innovations, and build a carbon management infrastructure that is roughly 8 times the size of our global oil system, from scratch.
The COVID-19 public health guidance seemed extreme until the virus and disease were upon us. When the COVID-19 pandemic eventually subsides, will we continue to view sustainability and decarbonization recommendations in the same light?
The technical details can be overwhelming, until they become part of everyday speech
Here in the US, six weeks ago we were reading about a “flu virus” starting in Wuhan and spreading rapidly throughout China. Now, we are all overnight experts in the novel coronavirus COVID-19, public health, self-isolation, social distancing, mitigation versus suppression, and the dictionary definition of a pandemic. Who would have ever thought that a phrase like “flattening the curve” would be trending on Twitter? The details get very technical very fast and this is always a challenge for mass communication of science and policy.
In climate, we talk about climate models, global warming potentials, the difference between weather and climate, atmospheric and earth science, radiative forcing, the carbon cycle, and drawdown, among other things. Like the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis is underpinned by a set of complex scientific topics. Each is digestible and understandable, but it’s not a very approachable subject. For most people these are not intuitive concepts, and not part of everyday experience.
The feeling of being overwhelmed by the technical and scientific details can be a challenge in both cases, compounded by the urgent need to understand these complex topics in a moment of crisis, however, we are clearly seeing this understanding can be developed very quickly when people see how the threat is directly affecting them.
Scientists warn us of what is to come, but we still resist action:
Epidemiologists knew that something like this could erupt. They have organized a global network of experts to track the spread of influenza and other coronaviruses, assess each for its potential to spread widely, and organize a global vaccine response -- annually (thank you flu shot!).
Yet when the crisis first hit, many resisted expert advice. There was a delay in implementing the clear recommendations of the people who know best. I think it is fair to say that even with the expert advice, we were not ready for this. The Ted Talk by Bill Gates from April 2015 titled “The next outbreak? We are not ready” is up to 20 million + views. I wonder how many views it had 3 months ago?
In the climate world there is an international network of scientists called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who have organized a system of gathering multiple streams of peer-reviewed research, and have been compiling comprehensive reports on a 5-year cycle for the past 30 years. Their evaluation of the scientific evidence for climate change, the consequences of inaction on our natural ecosystems and human societies, and suggestions on what to do about it have been there for everyone to see for years. They are just one group among many who have studied the problem, and offered science-based guidance and solutions. But still we hesitate, we deflect, and in some cases, outright ignore.
Will our COVID-19 experience push us into a new way of thinking and acting? Even now, I admit that I still cannot believe COVID-19 has brought us to this point. It’s a lesson that exponential threats really do catch us off guard, and can surprise even those of us who think we are ready to deal with them.
What Actions Can We Take?
There are many things people can and are doing locally and more broadly.
Do pandemics or climate crises feel abstract to you? One thing always helps - ask an expert. Ask and encourage every scientist or doctor in your circles to break down these challenges into tangible consequences that you understand, to make them real in your local context. Go ahead and ask your questions. No question is too small or too large. Also share some of your favorite explainer videos with friends and family, Awareness helps.
Even though it has not been perfect, overall the COVID-19 response is showing us that we can act together, at a large scale, to battle global threats. Solutions are within our reach if we challenge ourselves to go farther, push a bit harder, and collaborate more. At XPRIZE, we say that the day before an idea becomes a breakthrough, it’s just a crazy idea. How can we turn today’s crazy ideas into tangible action for the next crisis?
In response to COVID-19, XPRIZE just launched the XPRIZE Pandemic Alliance, a data-powered global alliance that combines the power of collaboration, competition, innovation, and radical thinking to accelerate solutions that can be applied to COVID-19 and future pandemics. More and more businesses and individuals are joining each day from launch partner Anthem to Intel, IBM, ITU, and NVIDIA.
For climate, get involved in our NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE where innovators are showing how to turn CO2 emissions into valuable products. We’re also working on a new prize that we plan to launch next year -- the Carbon Removal XPRIZE, which will challenge innovators to take CO2 directly out of the air and oceans. These are innovations that may seem like nice-to-haves in 2020, but could soon be considered crucial to our survival on Earth. The time is NOW to accelerate breakthrough innovation on climate.
In many ways, the COVID-19 response has also been a painful lesson in the challenges of integrating science advice into public policy, and into the culture at large. The good news is that the data finally cut through the noise in a way that allowed us to act with purpose. When we get through this, we will have learned a lot about what to do, and what not to do, the next time a virus threatens our societies. But if we are willing to look, I think we can draw lessons in how to deal with other existential threats like climate change, that we know will challenge us in the decades to come.