Anyone who has been closely following the main street news media will highlight the fact that the two most written about news topics during the past year were the global pandemic and climate change. The main difference between these two topics is that the impact of climate change was foreseen for some time, and the global pandemic came out of nowhere. On the one hand, the impact of COVID-19 was immediate and introduced serious economic consequences in the short-term. On the other hand, the impact of climate change is expected to be more long-term and will affect different regions in different ways at different times.
The big news was that several vaccines were quickly developed for COVID-19 and appeared to offer an effective means to ending the pandemic, especially in the more industrialized countries. There is however no short-term fix to tackle the consequences of climate change, including the needed reduction in greenhouse gases. The World Health Organization (WHO) is the one primary body that can address pandemic issues for both industrialized and emerging countries. The WHO is leading the charge to get vaccination rates up in the emerging and poorer countries. There really is no primary international body that can speak to climate change, with individual countries having to develop their own initiatives. The agreement coming out of the COP26 conference in November does not achieve the most ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris accord — to limit Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Instead, delegations left Glasgow with the Earth still on track to blow past that threshold, pushing toward a future of escalating weather crises and irreversible damage to the natural world.
However, the differences between industrialized and emerging countries are quite stark for the socio-economic impact of both the pandemic and climate change. In both cases, the lesser developed countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas will suffer greater consequences from any failure to adequately address both issues. What is common about both topics has been the extensive use of statistics by news outlets and government bodies to track such consequences, including fatalities and economic impacts. Moreover, politicians and heads of state have had to take a back seat to climate scientists and epidemiologists when it came to the development and implementation of policies and initiatives. For the most part, science took the lead over current and future efforts. Repeatedly, politicians were forced to rely on the results of scientific study and research, a novelty in some countries.
Of course, there are always the deniers and conspiracists who oppose the conclusions of scientific research as it applies to COVID-19 and climate change. Unfortunately, among the first deniers on both issues were such political leaders as U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Initially, both the U.S. and Brazil had had what was arguably the worst pandemic policy response in the industrialized world. Under both administrations, environmental laws and initiatives were negatively affected. President Bolsonaro, who has pushed to open more of the Amazon rainforest to mining and agriculture since taking office in 2019, has been criticized at home and abroad for increased deforestation under his government. Interestingly enough and ironically, both Presidents became sick with COVID-19 while in office.
Something tells me that by this time next year, both of these major issues will continue to dominate the global news. There are still further economic, social and political consequences that will attributed to these two issues. The pandemic most likely and hopefully will evolve into a more localized endemic problem. More extreme weather will continue to plague several regions of the world, including in the U.S. and Canada. Unless there is the unleashing of a Third World War, the headlines will no doubt continue to focus on the issues surrounding climate change and COVID-19.
FROLITICKS 
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