Our pandemic response was a disaster. What does that mean for climate change?
We aced the vaccine development but flunked just about everything else. How can we save the planet if we can't agree there is a problem?
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One of the many lessons to come out of the last painful year of death and economic devastation is that America is a country deeply divided by contradictory realities, none deeper or more dangerous than the gap between people who believe in science and those who do not. What this means for our collective future, it seems to me, is that unless we get it together, and quickly, we may not have a collective future.
As of this morning, 536,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 and yet there are millions of Americans who still say they won’t get vaccinated. A CBS News poll found 34% of Republicans say they will not get the vaccine. Independents aren't far behind, with 30% saying no, while only 10% of Democrats say they won’t get them.
This is not to say that only Republicans are anti-vaccine; there are studies that suggest that Democrats are a slim majority of the very hardcore anti-vaccine crowd and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a leading skeptic. But, there is no question that the Trump administration’s schizophrenic approach—the unfortunately named “Warp- Speed” effort to develop vaccines in record time, which is among the greatest scientific achievements in history—versus the massive campaign of lies and misinformation to assure the public that Covid-19 was no big deal, has left millions of people rightfully confused and hesitant to roll up their sleeves.
Because the disinformation campaign was conducted mainly by the President himself and amplified by the Conservative media echo chamber, it bears more weight with Republicans than the truly historic scientific triumph which Trump could rightfully claim credit for if he were interested in such boring things. His public attitude and raw meat rallies—where he refused to wear a mask and never advised anyone else to do so—turned a simple precaution into a revolt against “government infringing on your rights” and killed untold thousands of supporters in the process. But, I mean, who wouldn’t be willing to die to “own the libs?”
Climate change has a similar dual reality problem and one that is certain to make it much more difficult to address in a fractured society that can’t seem to recognize an existential crisis when it sees one. Check out this chart from Pew Research.
The report summary reads in part:
About nine-in-ten Democrats (88%, including independents who lean to the party) now consider climate change a major threat to the nation, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted March 3-29. That’s up 27 percentage points from a 2009 survey. Concern about climate change has increased among both liberal Democrats and moderate or conservative Democrats (rising 20 and 27 points, respectively).
By contrast, the 6 percentage point increase among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents since 2009 is not statistically significant. In the new survey, about three-in-ten Republicans (31%) consider climate change a major threat, while 45% say it is a minor threat and 24% say it is not a threat to the nation.
A Yale report released just last month paints a slightly more optimistic picture but doesn’t appear to address the specific question of political affiliation.
Americans who think global warming is happening outnumber those who think it is not happening by a ratio of more than 5 to 1.
About seven in ten Americans (72%) think global warming is happening. By contrast, 13% of Americans think global warming is not happening. Over the last five years (since our October 2015 survey), the percentage of Americans who think global warming is happening has increased by five percentage points.
One of the more troubling of the Yale findings suggests that much of the public is being badly misinformed.
More than half of Americans (58%) understand that most scientists think global warming is happening. However, only one in five (20%) understand how strong the level of consensus among scientists is (i.e., that more than 90% of climate scientists think human-caused global warming is happening).
It would be comforting to think that the last year was a very long and hard “teaching moment” that would help guide us through the worsening existential threat of climate change. Somehow, though, I doubt it. Our responses to the Covid-19 pandemic have been inadequate and deadly for far too many to feel confident about that.
America remains a badly broken country. We have never needed wise and effective leadership that can build unity and common purpose more.
If we continue to approach the climate crisis—which will likely kill far more people than the pandemic unless we act now— with the same level of painfully slow and contradictory government action, the trashing of science, the lies, the deliberate misinformation, the outlandish conspiracy theories , the rejection of global alliances, and the zero-sum political games that made Covid-19 worst than it had to be, we’re toast, people. Literally.
Dig Deeper
Climate Change in the American Mind: December 2020 (Yale)
U.S. concern about climate change is rising, but mainly among Democrats (Pew)
U.S. Public Views on Climate and Energy (Pew)
Preparing for the decarbonisation transition ahead (Xynteo)
What is Environmental Justice? (EarthWatch)
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Our pandemic response was a disaster. What does that mean for climate change?
You also screwed up AOC's name in an earlier newsletter.
I used the wrong figure in the original post. As of this morning 536,000 Americans have died of Covid which is still a staggering number. My bad. Sorry.