COVID-19 climate lessons

Pandemics and climate disruption are catastrophic, and potentially existential, risks.

Climate disruption now manifests as an emergency because the climate system is close to tipping points that could drive it to a “point of no return”, where further warming would become self-sustaining. 

Existential threats require a particular approach to risk management.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to understand the world’s preparedness for such a risk, and how and why the world’s response, by and large, was grossly inadequate.

This failure has important lessons for the preparedness of human society to respond to the much greater threat posed by human-induced climate disruption.

There are also important, positive lessons in the pandemic response about the capacity of society to move quickly into emergency mode.

Read the Breakthrough discussion paper by David Spratt and Alia Armistead - “COVID-19 climate lessons”.