Earth Day: Greta Thunberg calls for 'new path'
after pandemic
Climate activist says Covid-19 outbreak shows change
can happen when we listen to scientists
Jonathan
Watts
@jonathanwatts
Published
onWed 22 Apr 2020 18.15 BST
Greta
Thunberg has urged people around the world to take a new path after the
coronavirus pandemic, which she said proved “our society is not sustainable”.
The Swedish
climate activist said the strong global response to Covid-19 demonstrated how
quickly change could happen when humanity came together and acted on the advice
of scientists.
She said
the same principles should be applied to the climate crisis.
“Whether we
like it or not, the world has changed. It looks completely different now from
how it did a few months ago. It may never look the same again. We have to
choose a new way forward,” she told a YouTube audience in a virtual meeting to
mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.
“If the
coronavirus crisis has shown us one thing, it is that our society is not
sustainable. If one single virus can destroy economies in a couple of weeks, it
shows we are not thinking long-term and taking risks into account.”
The teenage
campaigner, who initiated the global school strike movement, was filmed at the
Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm in digital conversation with Johan Rockström,
the earth systems scientist and director of the Potsdam Institute.
He said
there was a strong correlation between the pandemic and the environmental
crisis: deforestation and the wildlife trade heighten the likelihood of viruses
leaping the species boundary; air pollution increases human vulnerability by
weakening respiratory systems; and the expansion of air travel allows epidemics
to spread more quickly. “The scientific evidence shows they are interconnected
and part of the same planetary crisis,” he said. “We are living beyond the
carrying capacity of the planet so we are putting human health and the health
of nature at risk.”
The
lockdown has reduced emissions and hurt the oil industry, which is the biggest
source of the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet to dangerous levels.
But the two speakers stressed the virus should not be seen as an environmental
panacea because it has brought immense human suffering, provided only temporary
respite and distracted from campaigns, research and international meetings that
aimed to find a smoother transition to a clean economy.
The key
lesson from the pandemic, they said, was the need for governments to pay more
heed to scientific warnings.
“We have
underestimated the shocks. We need to build more shock absorbers into the system,”
Rockström said. “Around the world, people are recognising the uncertainty and
are being cautious. Also regarding the climate, we cannot know for certain how
far we can push up global warming. So I hope that we come out of the pandemic
with the recognition that science shows: it’s not worth taking the risk ... I
believe that something new is coming from the ashes of the corona crisis. We’ll
rise out of this, but not by bouncing back to the old world.”
He said
there was more support now for green new deals in Europe and South Korea and
for China to go beyond the economy when setting priorities.
Neither
speaker mentioned the US president, Donald Trump, Brazil’s president, Jair
Bolsonaro, or other leaders who have either dismissed the risk of the pandemic
or used it to relax environmental protections and health standards in the name
of economic recovery. But Thunberg alluded to these dangers.
“During a
crisis like this there is a big risk that people try to use this emergency to
push their own agenda or their own interests. We need to make sure that doesn’t
happen,” she said. “I cannot stress enough how important it is that we are
active democratic citizens so a crisis like this doesn’t slide in the wrong
direction.”
Elsewhere,
the UN secretary general, António Guterres, marked Earth Day by declaring the
pandemic to be the biggest threat the world had faced since the second world
war, though he said the environmental emergency was deeper.
He said
post-pandemic recovery should focus on six goals: the creation of clean, green
jobs; taxpayer support for sustainable growth; an economic shift from grey
concrete to green nature; investment in the future rather than the past with an
end to fossil fuel subsidies; the incorporation of climate risk into the
financial system, and international cooperation.
A new
opinion poll suggests there is strong support for this view. Sixty-six per cent
of Britons believe the climate is as serious a long-term crisis as Covid-19 and
58% agree it should be prioritised in the economic recovery. The survey of 14
countries by Mori found even higher levels of support in China, Germany,
France, India, Italy and Japan. Even in the least enthusiastic nations – the US
and Australia – a majority supported green priorities in stimulus programmes.
Public
opinion has shifted dramatically in the past two years as a result of
increasingly grim climate studies and high-profile campaigns by groups such as
FridaysForFuture and Extinction Rebellion. Big strikes and marches have been
postponed but Thunberg vowed they will be back once it is safe to return to the
streets.
“We have to
adapt. That is what you have to do in a crisis,” she said. “People are thinking
we will get out of this and then we will push even harder.”
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