40. CAN WE USE THE CORONAVIRUS TO SAVE THE PLANET? - A Student Ponders The Positives of This Pandemic
In the late twentieth century China was facing a famine, to fix this the Chinese government allowed the people to hunt wild animals. As the human population grew and the wild animal population dipped, China still faced a major problem in feeding the nation, therefore in the late 20th century wild animals were bred on farms to be then sold at markets. As this became more widespread people ate more of these animals. They were kept alive at markets, in cages stacked on top of each other, in high density, ready to be killed and sold on site. These unhygienic and unsanitary sites allowed viruses from different animals being passed onto each other and then humans. One of which is what we now know as the Coronavirus, Covid-19. I will argue that we should use Covid-19 to teach ourselves how we can save the planet. This is because we are facing a climate crisis which needs to be solved. Due to the virus most flights have cancelled, people are consuming less, and the earth is benefitting. The virus has also revealed the drastic consequences overpopulation is having on all of us.
Due to the Coronavirus, flights have been halted. This has led to a decrease in carbon emissions and so the slowing down of climate change. However, this slowing down is not enough to warrant that we do not need to put the climate change crisis at the top of our list or ignore it. The virus has shown that people on business flights and for work do not need to travel, that in the modern age of video-calling and using the internet there are better, cheaper and more energy-efficient ways of meeting people. But, of course, many flights were used for going on holiday. The coronavirus has also shown that we do not need to holiday abroad every year. Many people who couldn’t have gone on holiday instead visited national parks like Snowdonia. Even though this has possibly not helped with the containment of the Coronavirus it has shown that we can make do. In an effort for the aviation industry to cut their losses, they have instead moved to transporting goods, which is what every country needs. Before, this was seen as something costly, the aviation industry commitment to this shows how deep in trouble they are in. Recently the Supreme Court ruled that Heathrow Airport could not have a third runway as it would go against the UK Climate Change 2050 target. Therefore, it has been recognised that the aviation industry does play a part in global warming and should be capped as much as possible. If the government were to decide to invest in the aviation industry to revitalise it then this would also go against the ruling. Therefore, the coronavirus has meant that we could let this particular industry contract.
The Coronavirus has meant that people have had to stay at home, eating a diet consisting of dried foods like pasta and tinned food. Therefore, this has led to fish populations starting to recover. Supermarkets are offering less choice of one product and we are cutting down on buying unessential products. This has led to nitrogen oxide output from factories, a major climate change factor, decreasing significantly. In my own home I have noticed that we are producing a significant amount of less waste, due to us wasting less food. Even though we should not be wasting food anyway, the coronavirus has done away with fears that just because a banana looks a bit strange you cannot eat it. Every piece of food becomes precious.
In order to look at the issue of overpopulation we have to emotionally detach ourselves from the bigger picture. In isolation, every death is sad to those people around them. This sadness or any other emotion leads us to reject claims of overpopulation: every “surplus” life is valuable to someone. Which is why we must detach ourselves. In January it was reported that 65 million could die. The Coronavirus is not in itself going to wipe out 5 billion people in order to meet the UN target of a population of 3 billion, so will not itself solve the problem of overpopulation. The coronavirus has revealed what overpopulation is doing to our planet. The coronavirus was started in China because of the way animals are kept, unfortunately. China needs to feed its growing population and so has to resort to these methods. If it had a smaller population perhaps it would not. When a population grows dramatically then it expands into new territories. In these new place's humans have not come into regular contact with the animals they will encounter. Therefore, this will lead to more diseases being passed from animals to humans. The animals could be killed but this would lead to an imbalance of the ecosystem and in the long-term would turn out worse for the planet. Humans also are more polluting than animals will ever be so climate change will increase. It is also pushing healthcare to its limits around the world, less people would mean more have access to healthcare and of better quality. You might be thinking that the UK has one of the best healthcare systems in the world yet is still being pushed to its limits but its not because the UK is overpopulated but because of the constant underfunding of the NHS over the past ten years. It is also important to note that this virus is infecting masses of the population, therefore no healthcare system would cope. Instead we have to work on preventative methods in case something like this happens again, this would be to help the population slowdown in number.
Currently we know little about the virus, but we have not denied the science. We accept that it is a major issue that needs to be tackled. In comparison we know a lot about the effect of climate change. However, we do not treat climate change with the same sense of urgency than the virus. Climate change may kill, displace and effect more lives than the coronavirus ever will. Therefore, we have two options:
(i) we take the coronavirus seriously so we should take climate change more seriously
(ii) not deal with the coronavirus like we are not dealing with the climate emergency then the death toll may reach over 5 billion, as overpopulation is the main factor in climate change, it would solve it.
Let us take (i) as we have already satisfied half of the approach - taking coronavirus seriously. Due to the coronavirus flights have been halted and many people are now working from home showing that the carbon dioxide from their commute is wasteful. We have known about climate change since the 1950s and some reports from the late nineteenth century speculated that the growing amount of carbon dioxide would have had some effect on the planet, though they did not know precisely what. In the last couple of decades, we have known, and yet no action has been taken as drastic as the one against the virus. They are two equally pressing issues therefore they should be tackled with the same consistency. Consistency allows us to not be contradictory and ensure positive development. This positive development is crucial in protecting ourselves, the animals, and plants on this planet against climate change.
If it we took the same approach to Covid-19 that we have to climate change, and did not implement measures to slow its spread such as social distancing campaigns and closing down cities, then hundreds of millions more people would have had it now. We have seen the effect of acting fast, and can compare countries which acted faster and slower by their death rates. Right now, solutions to climate change are not being seriously implemented in the same way. For consistency’s sake we either step up our measures against climate change or bring down our efforts against Covid-19 to the same level at which we battle to save the planet. Each approach provides a solution to the climate crisis - if we did not provide sufficient healthcare for everyone with the virus then many would be in society mixing with others and spreading it on. If this killed the five billion or more to meet the UN’s target of a population of 3 billion and keep it there, then less people would mean less resources consumed and less territory expansion of humans. Less population would mean a dramatic solution to climate change.
By selecting either option you are rejecting inconsistency, but it seems clear what our choice should be if we don’t want to wipe out billions of people. And certainly it seems like less extreme options for combatting the climate crisis, such as not eating meat, ought to be readily embraced now we have seen what the alternatives could be. Currently, we accept killing a sentient animal in the most brutal way, having it drained of its blood, being cut up and sticking it on a polystyrene tray then wrapping it in plastic which when decomposed enters the atmosphere in nano-particles which we then breathe in, it is not yet known what the effect of this is as it is to early to say but any synthetic and man-made chemicals that are not controlled are bound to have a negative effect on our health and the health of our planet. We know that eating meat will not have any pleasure for the animal, and not even us as we are becoming increasingly aware of the impact farming practices, plastic and transport are having on the planet, as well as on our physical health. What we can be sure of is that a living animal with no farming practices and plastic would be better. This is not just the exotic wildlife that is being sold around the world for meat but animals that we eat on an everyday basis like chicken. This would tackle the climate crisis as eating animals heavily has an impact on our carbon dioxide output, and would mean that animals are not kept at markets so viruses cannot be passed on, causing a pandemic. The coronavirus has made us see that ensuring consistency and solving overpopulation will help us save the planet. It has also, starkly, shown us that what might have been considered inconvenient, or a radical lifestyle change, a few months ago, can become the new normal very quickly when you treat an emergency like the emergency it is. And that failure to act, delays in acting, lead us only to more drastic and extreme action in the end, and a significantly higher loss of life.
However, the wet markets in China, where the pandemic started have reopened since the pandemic began, so it is only a matter of time before we see something like this again!
Author: Yaaseen Baksh, Student at King Edward VI Aston.