Comparison and Interactions between the Climate Crisis and the Coronavirus Pandemic
The pandemic of COVID-19 and climate crisis have many similarities: it seems that they both require decisive and immediate actions to reduce the losses. But the two still have different spatial-temporal characteristics, while interacting with each other.
It has been more than two months since the global coronavirus pandemic began, and there is still no light seen from the other end of the tunnel. The continual epidemic is also affecting the political circles in different countries.
In nations where the policies are effective or the curve has peaked, the accomplishment has become catalysts for nationalism and approval for the governing party; China’s claim to have zero new infections (excluding HK and Taiwan conveniently) in their propaganda is the most obvious; the ruling party in Taiwan also gained increased popularity (despite the economic decline due to the pandemic) for its famous “preemptive deployment” policy.
On the contrary, in Europe and America where policies are not so effective, right wing politicians are facing tremendous challenges. A commentary from ARD noted that these politicians have long been using refugees and immigrants as scapegoats for many issues, but during this wave of epidemic, these minorities are by no means the cause (and probably will become the major victims); therefore the right wing parties lost influence with their usual rhetoric. The incompetence of some of the typical right wing politicians (most notably PM of UK, Boris Johnson, who has been tested positive) during the pandemic has also decreased their popularity. A comment on guardian pointed out that compared with the longer timescales of the climate crisis (which makes accountability difficult), the ever rising infection numbers yield greater pressure for these politicians. In addition, anthropogenic climate change and other hazards caused by conventional energy sources affect mainly the future generation, while the pandemic affects the elderly at present, making the pandemic a greater blow for right wing parties compared with the climate crisis, since their supporters have a higher average age.
Short Term Effects of the Pandemic: Conventional Energy Suffers More than Green Energy
The pandemic naturally also affects energy transition. In the very short term, large scale quarantine and lock-down have decreased the productivity, which immediately resulted in a reduction of air pollution and carbon emissions around the world. Nevertheless, from the patterns of recent capitalism cycles it is safe to predict that this effect will be limited, since recovery policies without the perspective of energy transition will only lead to drastic rebound of carbon emissions after the pandemic.
Obviously, all economy sectors will suffer in the short term, including both green and conventional energy. Nonetheless, for the sake of a successful energy transition, two things are of most importance: first, compared with conventional energy, green energy should suffer less during this pandemic; secondly, in the long term, energy transition and green economy should be at the core of the recovery policies to avoid a lock-in of conventional energy sources in the new economy system. Only when both of these are guaranteed can humanity avoid the long term catastrophe of severe climate change, after suffering from the short term catastrophe of coronavirus pandemic.
For the first point, the answer is somehow optimistic. The International Energy Agency and Bloomberg New Energy Finance do predict a drop of new installations of green energy this year, but compared that with the plummeting prices of conventional energy recently (i.e. oil), green energy has been doing relatively well. The distributive nature and capital profiles of green energy helped its survival during the pandemic. As PV-Magazine revealed, the number for on site workers at a rooftop solar project is low, and working on the rooftop does not violate the social distance regulations, so such projects can still be proceeded. On the other hand, building or maintaining conventional power plants seem to be more constrained; one of the last remaining nuclear construction project in Europe, Flamanville, has been slowed down after the virus outbreak, and the planned finish date is (once again) postponed. In the meantime, 97% of the scheduled outage of nuclear power plants in US will probably be affected by the quarantine measures.
Long Term Effects of the Pandemic: Advantages of Green Energy Only Obvious with the Right Recovery Policies
As for the second part, there are both bright and dark sides. The drastic impact the pandemic has on conventional energy will only persist since risk of global epidemic will probably increase in the future, therefore many analyses suggest that for investors, the risk perception of different energy sources will change in the long term. Asset management firm Aream believes that green energy investment has attractive feature for investors who wish to diverge their risk profile (stable cash flow, low risk correlation with conventional energy sources, and low solvency requirements, to name a few). On the other hand, the recently plummeted oil prices revealed the unstable profitability of fossil fuel energy (which will only get worse when stricter climate policies become the norm in the future), which also affects the investment portfolio of investors.
People in the conventional energy sector doesn’t seem to be willing to improve themselves and transit to a greener industry; neither will they submit themselves to the fate of being phased out without resistance. Under the name of boosting the economy, many in the fossil fuel industry have started lobbying for subsidy. The US government is planning to subsidize the oil industry; the nuclear industry is also seeking for tax abatement; highly polluting industries are asking EPA to loosen or even cancel environmental regulations.
The trade-off between recovery and sustainable development is obviously fabricated by the conventional energy industry. Many scholars and groups have stressed that a recovery plan that places the green new deal at its core is the only right way. The green new deal manifesto South Korea announced amidst the pandemic and election campaign will ensure overall development and employment while honoring its energy transition goal; it is the model policy we should seek of.
Last but not the least: part of the reason why the pandemic has been so severe was because many nations did not take aggressive measures as soon as possible in the hope of remaining “business as usual”. This can be an important lesson for future measures against another epidemic outbreak or climate policies: it is now clear that only decisive and immediate actions can reduce the losses under these types of crises.
