Climate and Pandemic Models Speak Louder Than Words

(Bloomberg) --

Both Covid-19 and climate change are, as my colleagues Jess Shankleman and Ewa Krukowska  point out, what economists call exogenous shocks—factors that re-shape a system. The key to survival is figuring out ways to suppress such shocks.

The European Union had previously decreed, under the banner of its Green Deal, that there would be no net greenhouse gas emissions from the continent by 2050. It was already an ambitious goal before the novel coronavirus upended life as we know it. The EU goal relies on hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in technologies that barely exist at present. Just months after setting the goal, it’s already off to a difficult start. 

The United Nations this week announced the postponement of a pivotal round of global climate talks scheduled for November in Scotland. The COP 26 conference, with more than 26,000 expected attendees, is one of the world’s largest diplomatic gatherings. It’s also crucial to building the international cooperation necessary for a genuine attempt to slow the pace of global warming before catastrophe strikes.

Nations at this year’s conference were supposed to submit long-term pollution goals that would (theoretically) put the world on track to have emissions peak by mid-century. The delay, and the pandemic in general, reduces political pressure on nations to stiffen those goals.

China’s lockdown may have temporarily reduced air pollution as industry ground to a halt, but the pandemic has had the opposite effect on the Asian nation’s nascent recycling effort.

Even weather forecasts aren’t immune to the pathogen. The World Meteorological Organization is concerned with the virus’ impact on the quality and quantity of weather observations and forecasts. Maintenance on satellite systems and weather stations could be affected if widespread shutdowns and stay-at-home orders continue in the coming weeks.

Perhaps more than anything else, the pandemic has exposed the general public to the science of risk modeling. The work of a group of epidemiologists at Imperial College London shocked the world on March 16. Letting the coronavirus go unchecked could result in 500,000 deaths in the U.K. and 2.2 million in the U.S., they found. (On April 2, the world exceeded 1 million cases. More than 51,000 have died.)

Even U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.S. President Donald Trump, both slow to respond to and at times dismissive of the grave threat posed by Covid-19, were finally jerked into action by the model.

This kind of modeling isn’t only used to game out the spread of deadly viruses. It’s also necessary to predict the future of our planet. As with Covid-19, rapid shifts in climate models often spur public awareness, and sometimes action.

Climate economist Gernot Wagner argues in his column this week that these models show we must take aggressive action against both the virus and climate change. Yes, the numbers are terrifying. But “denying basic physics and chemistry will not make the climate problem disappear,” he writes. Nor will attempting to reinterpret medical realities make the virus disappear. “Economics 101 supports the fundamental conclusions of climate science, much like it supports the fundamental epidemiological conclusions in the case of Covid-19.”

Josh Petri writes the Week in Green newsletter recapping the best reads and key news in climate change and green solutions.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.