Thoughts from Ipsun’s co-founder and CEO, Herve Billiet.
The COVID pandemic in 2020 and 2021 has changed the world and many lives. I’ll go over a few things that both catastrophes have in common or what we could learn from COVID and apply it to the climate change emergency.
Need for Speed:
The virus spread quickly throughout the entire world affecting everybody. Governments felt pressure to address the issue. People changed their daily habits in a sudden and drastic way. Climate change on the other hand is a process that’s been happening slowly for many years. The climate change situation is similar to the boiling frog fable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog that’s put suddenly into boiling water will jump out, but if a frog is put in water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death.
We hear about stronger storms, heavier rains, more droughts, more wildfires, but will we ever get to the point where people suddenly realize it’s happening, and will governments suddenly be compelled to address the climate change situation as an emergency, just like they did with COVID?
We Need Our Government
All governments had a reaction to COVID. Everybody came up with a plan, a reaction, a potential solution. I don’t want to argue which government did better or handled the situation in the best possible way. My takeaway is that every government felt compelled to address the situation at the highest level of government. We The People are governing ourselves by electing officials representing us and keeping us all together as a society.
My point is that we really need our Government to act in the best interest of our collective group. It’s best that our climate doesn’t change too much so we can all keep doing whatever we’re currently doing.
Our Government has the motive of acting against climate change and has the means to make a meaningful impact. Individuals will suffer the consequences of inaction the most, but we don’t have a way to be very impactful. I run a solar installation business and if all goes well I would roughly install the size of 1 small nuclear plant in my lifetime. That’s nice, but nothing earth chattering. We need governments with their budgets, legislative and legal power to take action and guide all us of in the right direction.
During COVID it’s the government that held press briefings, had government institutions and scientific representatives giving updates that we trusted. We need our government’s resources to move the needle on climate change. I’ll keep doing my part n fighting climate change, but I know my part is relatively small, but I can’t stand by and do nothing. I do what I can.
We Are Social Creatures. Each Solution to a Problem Needs A Social Aspect.
COVID highlighted how much we’re just little animals. We’re social little creatures. We need nature, air, water to stay alive. We need each other to stay sane.
COVID made us feel we’re still part of the animal kingdom. I am writing this sitting at home with HVAC running, wi-fi connecting me to the internet, kids playing with magnets and Legos. All amazing technological prowess, but in the end we’re just animals.
Climate change is affecting our habitat and that means we either adapt or die. It would be wiser not to change our own habitat.
Because we know better than before that we’re social creatures, solving problems at work, in our personal lives, or for climate change should have a technical solution, but each solution should also have a human or social part. Climate change is a technical problem that can be resolved with technology, but it’s best to pair it with a social solution. So far, we’ve been focused too much on the technicalities of climate change. More needs to be done to figure out the social aspect and how it an help propel the technical solution.
Are we all equally affected? Not really.
A biological virus affected all humans in about the same way. All our lives got affected, but some groups of people were more affected than others and that has nothing to do with the medical aspect of the virus, as much as it’s about the inequalities in our society.
Climate change will also affect us all like COVID did, but then some groups of people will be more affected.
Don’t wait for everybody to understand Climate Change.
The pandemic was a fact early on. Many medical professionals in multiple countries all came to the same conclusion about a virus spreading throughout the world.
Even when the medical knowledge and medical institutions we built as a society all pointed towards a pandemic, to this day there are still people that don’t understand or believe a pandemic is happening. People are dying of the virus, and until the bitter end, some couldn’t wrap their mind around the virus. So even with overwhelming medical evidence that affects people directly, some people still don’t want to believe it and act accordingly to protect themselves and protect their loved ones.
These people didn’t prevent the medical community from creating a vaccine and inoculating as many people as possible.
I think it’s the same with climate change. The evidence is overwhelming, so let’s not try to convince the minority of something that is obvious. I’ve seen people’s houses burning in California due to forest fires caused by severe drought exacerbated by climate change, and even with their house on fire, that person denied the existence of climate change.
Let’s put our time and energy into acting against climate change. If a person doesn’t “believe” in climate change now, no evidence and nothing will convince that person otherwise. Just like with COVID, I think our society should act and protect itself and its people even without the support of a minority.
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