What’s the Bigger Threat- Global Warming or Coronavirus?

The coronavirus has definitely proved to be a cloud with a silver lining to it, which are obviously the “positive” environmental effects that it’s having (and the Greta Thunberg memes). As for the clouds filled with smog, harmful CFC emissions and dust particles, we don’t seem to be seeing those anymore because of the strictly enforced lockdown, both in India and abroad. 

As human activities have come to a halt, nature has resumed its flow. But is the Coronavirus really proving to be a solution? And does environmental conservation mean economic stagnation? These are the questions I’d like to tackle, in honor of Earth Day.

Global warming isn’t as imminent a threat as a pandemic and perhaps it is this fact that has jolted the major economies of the world to get into total shutdown. The effects of the pandemic are tangible and could cripple the international economy much faster than Global Warming purely because of the substantial loss of life (read: labor). 

The new coronavirus has an R0 of roughly 2 to 2.5, meaning that each new person spreads the disease to about 2.2 people on average. That means that it is more contagious than the seasonal flu, but less contagious than other diseases like SARS. Furthermore, the death rate percent for the virus is currently estimated at 2.7% by the World Health Organization with an absolute number of 185166 deaths.

In comparison, if you see the WHO estimates of people dying annually due to air pollution, it is at 4.6 million per year. And those are just the premature deaths due to other existing respiratory problems. And now these patients are the same people who are at a higher risk of contracting Covid-19. (yay air pollution) China’s lockdown alone saved 77,000 lives from succumbing to the skyrocketing CO2 levels in the atmosphere caused due to automobiles etc. This just goes to prove the point that increased industrial emission levels are actually what’s made us more susceptible to the virus. So that means, countries like India and China agreeing to lock down is helping the atmosphere immensely.

Humans: 0, Coronavirus: 1.

Deviating slightly from the topic: While the inverted bell curve did predict that the global economy could perhaps go into a recession in 2020, it would never have guessed that the coronavirus would prove to be the recession’s “agent of transmission”. Economic activity has stalled and stock markets have tumbled alongside the falling carbon emissions. It’s the precisely opposite of the drive towards a decarbonised, sustainable economy that many have been advocating for decades. So what’s to say that we wouldn’t come out of this even worse?

Well, as the world has proven now, stronger economies can and do have the economic, political and financial infrastructure to support themselves in wake of a global pandemic. The cost of this pandemic is proving to be heavy with already 1 trillion dollars wiped from the global reserve. Ironically, on March 4th 2020, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the European climate law and committed the same number of Euros for the European Green deal which will legally force EU members to be carbon neutral by 2050. 

But we can still hope that now our collective attitude to the environment changes. Instead of taking extreme measures to save one’s economy, at least now we are taking extreme measures to save our home, the only one that we have ever known.