Whatever You Think Climate Change Will Be Like, You’re Wrong

Predicting disaster is impossible but important

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

The other day, I was thinking back to what it was like in the middle of March 2020. By that point, the COVID (or, as we called it back then, novel coronavirus) pandemic had broken loose in China and started to spread to other countries. There were reports of cruise ships in Japan, possible cases on the West Coast, and outbreaks in Italy. Everybody knew that something big was coming, and our minds raced to imagine what it would be like.

What did you think the pandemic would be like? How accurately were you able to envision it?

Here’s what I remember anticipating, a pastiche cobbled together from movies I’d seen, news accounts, and analysis I saw on the internet (some of it expert, some of it less so):

• There was a real danger of society falling apart — most pandemic movies featured scenes of looting and violence.
• The lockdowns would be severe. I feared that, if I traveled to another state, my own state might not let me back in. I imagined roadblocks and quarantines (another pandemic-movie staple).
• The lockdowns would be brief. My kids and I still laugh (bitterly) about how I told them that school might be closed for a week or two after…