The quick response of governments around the the world to the Covid pandemic is generating arguments that their response to the Climate Crisis should be the same. But how strong are the arguments?
Discussions in the media about the similarity of government’s response to Covid and the Climate Crisis ranges from blogs, newspapers articles and to esteemed publications such as the Lancet. The argument that permeates through the articles is that both crises have the same characteristics: they are global, a public health crisis, affect how we live, our knowledge about them is supported by science and will exaggerate inequalities i.e. the poor will be affected more than the rich. The key point in the argument is that because both crisis have the same characteristics with the same consequence of high death rates therefore governments should have the same response.
On closer inspection of the authors arguments they fall foul of the analogy fallacy, comparing comparing ‘apples and pears’. The Climate Crisis has been developing over at least 100 years, since the Industrial Revolution, and is only now beginning to have a direct impact on the way that we live. There is a large amount of economic inertia built up from investments in technology and therefore it will take tens of years before any environmental initiatives will have an impact. Solutions to climate crisis already exist but it is overcoming the reluctance to change our lifestyles that is the major barrier. On the other hand Covid has happened at the global level over the last two years which compared to the Climate Crisis is very quick. Solutions in the shape of developing new vaccines are speeding up to deal with the new variants and eventually it will be managed at the same level as flu.
Many of the articles about the connection between the two crisis that are flooding the media are more opinion pieces rather than presenting a strong argument for governments to speed up their response to the Climate Crisis. A better approach would be to look at the characteristics that are similar in both crisis to learn how peoples attitudes and behaviours could be changed to improve their response to the Climate Crisis.
The argument discussed above is not only fallacious but is logically invalid. For more information see 'argument from analogy' or click here for my own analysis.