<span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">The coronavirus pandemic and protecting the climate – some discussion points</span> | Corona Sustainability Compass

It is already clear: Covid-19 is going to change the world. The consequences of the uncontrolled spreading of the virus are so dramatic that at least for now, many societies have accepted changes and restrictions to their everyday lives that they would otherwise have considered inconceivable. In recent weeks, it has also become clear that the poorest countries, and the poorer sections of the population in particular, have been hit the hardest by the crisis. This is something that the coronavirus has in common with the climate crisis. In general, two different approaches seem possible for returning to a situation of “normality” in the world after the coronavirus:

• an almost unconditional alignment towards economic expansion, to compensate for the recession which is certain to occur, or

• a cautious return to economic activity which prioritises health care and the protection of the climate and rationalises globalisation by focusing on maintaining and redeveloping domestic and regional productive capacities.

The coronavirus crisis has demonstrated the exceptional vulnerability of the current global economic structure. One measure for the success of the multi-billion-Euro rescue packages could be their contribution to a sustainable restructuring of the economy. This should take the following criteria into account under all circumstances:

• a greater focus on the consequential social and ecological costs, such as threats to vulnerable social groups due to global warming, forest fires, storms and water shortages, as well as a limitation of globalisation and a clear regionalisation of the structures of production;

• a retaining of the measures from the December 2019 Climate Package;

• the aligning of other support programmes for the economy with the needs of climate and environmental protection combined with a sustainable approach to economic growth and consumption through new working time models, providing support to informal structures, and testing out the idea of a basic income for all;

• a strengthening and expansion of the work to support climate protection in the areas of building design, mobility and energy in municipalities and parishes;

• an intensifying of the efforts to conserve and use raw materials efficiently by increasing the use of secondary raw materials and returning products to the product life cycle.

The normality of the economic growth to which we return should be different from the one before the coronavirus crisis. We should be brave enough to ask ourselves the question of what, exactly, the growth of the future should look like: growth which avoids using existing resources and takes the criteria for an environmentally sustainable economy into account instead. We should also think about other benchmarks for measuring our prosperity, such as the National Index of Well Being.

After all, like the coronavirus, climate change is an invisible threat. We must take climate protection equally as seriously as the virus, even if we will only feel the full impact of the consequences of climate change in the future. Like the coronavirus, acting too late on climate change would also have irreversibly negative consequences.