A sustainable world around the corner?
- Aletta van Popta
- 13 jun 2020
- 3 minuten om te lezen
In the past blogs I wrote about the coronavirus and some issues which are mostly in the present. A question I have is how is the world going to look like ‘after’ the coronavirus, if it ever goes away completely. Due to the coronavirus the world stopped for a moment because of lockdown measures. The lockdowns are not good for our economy system, but some climate issues disappeared suddenly. So maybe this is the moment to change to a sustainable world. CO2 emissions are decreasing as you can see on the satellite pictures from NASA. This is not the first time CO2 emissions are decreasing. We have seen it before in the past in 1973 with the oil crisis and in 2008 during the economical crisis. This decreases didn’t last, as soon as the economy got going again the short reduction was quickly overtaken. Are we really going to change things this time? I read some articles where some experts gave their opinion on the current crisis.
Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director of Greenpeace International says:
“I think the key is to put the health of people and the planet first. That’s what’s happening on COVID-19, but it has not yet happened on climate change in many cases, because the fossil fuel interests and the large industrial farming interests want to keep things the way they are. And what we’re learning from this pandemic is it is possible to switch it.”
Gina Gopinath, Chief Economist at IMF believes that COVID-19 is a wake-up call that we need to shift to a greener economy:
“But how do we get to a more planet-friendly way of doing economic activity? What’s needed is to ramp up production of alternative forms of energy. And second, to have infrastructure that’s much more climate-friendly. In both these measures, the public sector can play a very big role. Once you have those in place – alternatives to energy and greener, physical infrastructure – then you can obviously put on top of that carbon pricing, too, so companies and firms internalize the impact of their activities on the climate.”
Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) says:
“I can see how we could use this opportunity to design a better world, but we need both national and multilateral institutions to make it work.”
“What we don’t want is an unbalanced economy where you can’t get essentials like healthcare products and food because they’re produced in one group of countries and not in a balanced fashion around the world. We have to look at how to build a better economy alongside the convergent crisis of the environment – which is not going to go away.”
In short, we need to shift our economic focus away from profit, says Burrow.
“We want an end to the profit-at-all-costs mentality, because if we don’t build an economic future within a sustainable framework in which we are respectful of our planetary boundaries, and the need to change our energy and technology systems, then we will not have a living planet for human beings.”
We all know that fossil energy isn’t the future. So why would you after this recession invest again in fossil energy. The climate crisis is also a health crisis. Every year 4.2 million people die due to air pollution. Reducing air pollution and tackling global warming - both a matter of reducing our CO2 emissions - can save lives. But as long as the damage seems far away, this danger does not lead to the same radical action as the corona virus. I am not an expert on climate change or on economics, but it really seems to me this is the moment to change things around. The economy needs to be build up again. Wy not find a way that is sustainable for our planet too. If you want to know more about this subject you can watch the video down below.
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