My extended comments follow this PDF copy of a long e-mail I received today from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/…/american-public-re…/). As you’ll see, they’re devoting some time to COVID-19 concerns (although it’s unsaid, I suspect this is in part because climate change and pandemics now seem inseparable).

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First, the statistics are quite encouraging, though I suspect that some favorable answers resulted from a desire to appear more knowledgeable about, and observant of, COVID-19 guidelines than some individuals may have actually been. Still, even those answers would show a bias towards the right side of these issues.

Second, if these numbers are accurate and remain so (or get better), this raises the question of why it appears that news media are giving so much attention to “demonstrators” (really threateners) for personal freedom and against self-isolation. Of course, at some level this isn’t surprising: standard news organizations typically are reductionist about “sides” on a given issue, typically polarizing them as though only two sides merit attention. They also typically simplify those “sides.” But worse, they make it seem as though those (only) two “sides” have equal legitimacy and, worst of all, have roughly the same following. This happens all the time, but it has been especially concerning in recently years in treatment of the climate crisis, as though the 97% (or more) scientists who agree on the danger are equal to the 3% (or less) of scientists (often not climate specialists) who disagree (or at least who are funded by groups like fossil-fuel companies).

Third, although I’m not at all optimistic about this, to the extent we can trust these statistics, I would like to see wide pressure exerted to “restart” the country with the lessons we have serendipitously learned from our confrontation with COVID-19—on the one hand, the significant environmental benefits we’ve seen that go a long way toward supporting arguments in support of how to address human-caused climate change, on the other hand to acknowledge and remedy the ongoing social justice issues that this pandemic has highlighted.

We shouldn’t go back. Indeed, we can’t. Our world, and especially the world of our kids who will always have this as part of their youthful shaping, will never be the same.

But I’m highly sceptical that we’ll go “forward” in any kind of meaningful way. I expect large numbers of people will be desperate to pretend that they can return to what was familiar, regardless of the blemishes. I expect they will want to “continue” their pre-existing attitudes, good or bad, towards the climate crisis. (Can you imagine much willingness to go on making major reductions in driving? Indeed, I suspect that with the “freedom” of going out again, even more driving will occur for awhile) And I expect they will for the most part believe that this pandemic is an aberration that will occur no more than every century or so.

And just in case you yourself might be tempted to get complacent (though I’m damned if I know actions to advise that have the prospect of making an impact), consider this recent Bloomberg report (and if it’s accurate, which I assume, imagine the impact during this or a later pandemic):

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