On Covid & climate change

As the IPCC warns on global climate change, the experience of managing Covid provides a perspective on the likely policy response.

I am just back from a vacation in Greece that, although wonderful, felt a bit like it was at the centre of the world’s crises.  Although Greece has done a good job in managing Covid and in rolling out vaccines, cases are rising again.   

And Greece and other parts of southern Europe are suffering devastating fires on the back of record heatwaves across the region.  These exposures to a changing climate are expected to get worse.

Indeed, in a week in which global Covid cases and deaths continued to rise, the IPCC released its latest report – starkly warning that the world is on a path to exceed temperature increases of 1.5 degrees by 2040, and that we are fast running out of time to respond. 

Source: IPCC, August 2021

Although there are clear differences in scale and complexity between the Covid and climate change crises, the Covid experience provides perspectives into the likely shape of the climate change response.

Multilateralism is tough

Despite the global nature of Covid, most of the …