{"id":58693,"date":"2021-07-21T06:03:12","date_gmt":"2021-07-21T11:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58693"},"modified":"2021-07-21T06:03:12","modified_gmt":"2021-07-21T11:03:12","slug":"what-if-we-treated-the-climate-emergency-as-seriously-as-we-treated-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58693","title":{"rendered":"What if we treated the climate emergency as seriously as we treated COVID\u201319?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What if we treated the climate emergency as seriously as we treated COVID\u201319?<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Prof Alice Larkin, University of Manchester, argues that, if our society were really serious about tackling climate change, we would put much greater priority on social and economic change – as shown by the emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Article from Responsible Science Journal, no.3; advance online publication: 29 June 2021.
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I\u2019ve learnt two important lessons so far from the pandemic. The first is that change can take place quickly and the second is that government and societal priorities can shift dramatically to tackle an emergency.<\/p>\n

My third observation is not a lesson as such but something that has sparked my interest. It is that, in the same way that climate science and scientists find themselves scrutinised for clear facts when policy makers are faced with the need to engage with the science, so our medical colleagues find themselves and their science also thrust into this spotlight.<\/p>\n

It is even more the case now that they too are now tackling some of the same economic questions, in the terms of the \u2018GDP versus science\u2019 debate that many climate researchers have been dealing with for decades.<\/p>\n

Policy-makers don\u2019t yet consider climate change an emergency<\/strong><\/p>\n

So what can be harnessed from these lessons to tackle the climate emergency? The pandemic became all-consuming, leading to rapid policy, social and media responses that I suspect hasn\u2019t been experienced by any of us before in our lifetimes. As such, it draws attention to how little credence has been given to the term \u2018emergency\u2019 in a climate rather than a COVID-19 context.<\/p>\n

First, on the speed of response and government priorities, I\u2019ve spent the last 18 years trying to understand the scale of the climate emergency and how our energy systems need to transform to minimise cumulative carbon emissions…<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What if we treated the climate emergency as seriously as we treated COVID\u201319? Prof Alice Larkin, University of Manchester, argues that, if our society were really serious about tackling climate change, we would put much greater priority on social and economic change – as shown by the emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Article from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[31463,141,1053,13249,607],"class_list":["post-58693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-alice-larkin","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-crisis","tag-climate-emergency","tag-pandemic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58693"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58694,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58693\/revisions\/58694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}