"The climate crisis is only at ‘March 13th’ of the corona crisis”
What parallels can we draw between the corona crisis and the climate crisis? And can the coronavirus teach us how to deal with a global crisis? Climate scientist Peter Bijl, member of the Utrecht Young Academy, has written an article in newspaper NRC about the resemblances between these crises.
In the , Peter Bijl argues there is a lag between cause and effect for both the coronavirus and climate change. The incubation period of the virus is similar to the time between greenhouse gas emission and the resulting global warming. “Coronavirus and greenhouse gases are both silent killers.”
Furthermore, there is a delay in awareness within society. “The news from Wuhan arrived in January and kept coming. Images of crowded intensive care units, deceased people and empty streets. But only after the first cases in the Netherlands appeared, people became aware of the risks […] We could also look at climate change this way.”
“The climate crisis is only at March 13th of the corona crisis: the danger is visible, the future consequences are predictable, but the measures are lagging far behind. Hopefully this virus will teach us that it is only through social cohesion, government pressure and social willingness that we can overcome such a major crisis.”
Climate change is one of the core projects of the Utrecht Young Academy. In “1punt5” videos, faculty members explain various aspects of global warming. In the video below, Peter Bijl discusses what we can learn from the Pliocene, an era about 3.5 million years ago in which the CO₂ concentration was comparable to today.