Climate & Corona
“The first case was just found here in Whatcom County,” a student informed me, walking into the final class of the quarter. The mood in the class was tense, as if we had a pressing exam, but also mysterious, like we weren’t sure what we were all doing there. This was my class, I was the instructor, and I wanted us to focus on what would be my final day as student or faculty on campus.
As a student, attending classes these days (and perhaps in the before-times) requires a high tolerance for sitting through busy Powerpoints that by and large repeat similar points. “National emissions come in three neat and nearly equal categories - see this pie chart?”, “The boom in solar and wind installations was totally unforeseen - here, look at this line graph,”, “We are not on track to reduce our emissions to 1990 levels by 2040 - unless we do everything on this list”. These conclusions became less revelatory and more mundane. Terrifyingly mundane as it felt clear that this approach in energy policy wasn’t working on any great scale. I suppose I have these classes to thank for motivating me to start New Story Studio and focus more on energy adaptation than emissions reductions alone.
Stepping into the role of instructor was exhilarating. I had a chance to do the job differently while all the feedback was fresh in my mind. However, my main hope overall was to make sure the students knew that their futures weren’t predetermined. Nothing brought that fact more sharply into focus than the onset of this pandemic. The virus brought nations of industry to their knees in weeks, and with the swift drop in manufacturing, so too dropped air pollution. Quite suddenly, we as a class, and as a planet were witnessing an absolute about-face in emissions. Pandemics were never listed on any emissions reductions simulations that I used, though that will now surely change.
Uplifting data have been eeking out recently. Last month, Nature published a report detailing that by April 2020, global CO2 emissions fell by 17%. Seventeen percent! This is the same month that oil prices in the futures market went NEGATIVE. The oil contracts were worth less than $0 meaning oil buyers had to pay people to take oil off their hands. Yikes… and yay? It’s morally conflicting to celebrate such needed economic shifts at the expense of people around the world suffering from an infectious illness. Personally, I resent that this pandemic appears to be the only available motivator for industrial societies to swiftly change their self-destructive course. Aren’t we better than this?
While it has been soberly acknowledged that the emissions reductions are likely short-lived, and may even result in a back-firing - fittingly ironic and terribly literal - we are here, right now. The pandemic has shoved people into a global school of sorts with an emphasis on learning how to live within more limited means. Prudence is hardly exciting, I know. People often want to respond to diets with overeating, but I’ll maintain that our future in not predetermined. I will admit that climate action communication often relies on the premise of prudence. But perhaps I will re-frame what living within our means really means for us: Clean air. Abundant earth. Hopeful children.