Young Environmentalists to Older People: Submit to Climate Crisis or Get #COVID-19

Consider back in March, people in social media articulated what environmentalism is all about.

Young Generation Threatens Older Generation With Spreading COVID-19 If They Don’t Bow To Climate Alarm!

By Die kalte Sonne

How ethical is that? Read between the lines, the younger generation is threatening the older ones to flood them with corona and eventually kill them if the older ones do not bow to the climate alarm.

A thoroughly immoral proposal. Is this already blackmail or just the thought product of misguided spirits? Here is the corresponding press release of the PIK, on which the whole thing is based (emphasis added):

Climate Stabilization: Lessons from the Corona Crisis

17/08/2020 – The dynamics of the current COVID-19 pandemic could offer valuable insights for the efforts to mitigate climate change. Highlighting the parallels between the global health and the climate emergency, a team of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) has analyzed what policymakers and citizens can learn from the corona outbreak and how to apply it to the global effort of reducing CO2 emissions. Their proposal: A Climate Corona Contract that unites the younger and the older generations.

“The corona crisis is a test case for global emergency prevention and management in general,“ says lead author Kira Vinke. “The pandemic has shown that when reaction time is kept to a minimum, a larger public health crisis can be averted. In fact, we should take this very lesson to heart and apply it to managing the climate emergency.“  

Assessing risks and predicting outcomes

Vinke and the team of authors have looked at four dimensions of risk management: diagnosis, prognosis, therapy, and rehabilitation. They deduced which lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic could be used to stabilize global mean temperature. “The risks and causes of both the coronavirus and the climate crisis have to be scientifically assessed and quantified,“ explains PIK director and co-author Johan Rockström. But just as important as diagnostics are prognostic approaches: “Countries like New Zealand and Germany were able to predict the outbreak’s possible effects and moreover had the ability of immediate action. In the same vein, the global community must integrate climate risks assessments into decision making and act accordingly.

“The authors argue that insights from the Corona crisis can help to identify pathways for treating the causes and symptoms of climate change. “Both the Corona and the climate crisis are the result of increasing human pressure on the planet,“ says co-author Sabine Gabrysch, “But the good news is that the pandemic has demonstrated that with a combination of government action and individual lifestyle changes, it is possible to prevent damages. If there is a will, there is a way.”

FULL ARTICLE

PHOTO CREDIT: By NIAID Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML), U.S. NIH – https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/novel-coronavirus-sarscov2-images, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87089606