Pandemic Pandora’s Box
The future of zoonotic illnesses, lockdowns, and climate change.
As we navigate a new world in pandemic-ridden 2020, it’s becoming clear that COVID-19 has made our world appear much smaller and interconnected than most had imagined. However, the ties between climate change and novel zoonotic illnesses are becoming painfully clear, and it’s become an environmental Pandora’s Box.
Modern climate change studies can be traced back to 1859 where Victorian-era scientists were conducting experiments to prove how CO2 emissions could lead to global warming. From open-pit mining to the plundering of non-renewable resources, oil discovery in Saudi Arabia in the interwar period vastly changed the Middle East and its economies while leading in oil exports post-WWII. Around 89 percent of global CO2 emissions were from fossil fuels and non-renewable energy. While resource extraction continues throughout the world today, the scientific awareness around climate change and its devastating impact has remained side-lined to our detriment.
The WWII-era and beyond introduced innovation in defense technology, nuclear weapons, and expanded usage of airplanes, automobiles, ships, and the manufacturing of petrol-based products have significantly impacted the environment via CO2 omissions. Yet the scientific red flags on climate change were obscured. Eventually, in the post-Cold War era, the push for environmental awareness, intervention, and green initiatives held promise for making a positive impact for this dimension of globalization.
From the World Climate Conference in 1979 to the United Nations where over 190 countries committed to the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, the post-Cold War era evolved in reflecting the need of putting the environment first. However, along with populist movements exists climate change denial, and the US under the Trump Administration demonstrated this in 2017 in withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, which will go into effect this November.
The evolution of the environmental dimension has undoubtedly exposed that 19th century scientists were correct regarding global warming and that the ongoing harm on the environment certainly has its “Limits to Growth” as CO2 has increased from 11 gigatons in 1960 to 35 gigatons in 2016, stressing unsustainable practices are speeding up our demise.
Forests, which absorb about a quarter of annual greenhouse gas emissions, are also encountering strain due to agriculture and overdevelopment. Along with deforestation, biodiversity has experienced devastating effects. In 2018, WWF estimated that up to 58,000 species are lost each year, a decline of 60 percent since the 1970s.
As a result, we’re witnessing deforestation’s deadly effects on humankind through the zoonotic viral introduction of COVID-19, which has impacted every aspect of daily life for humans throughout the world. The alleged source of coronavirus is wild animals – specifically bats – and are most likely the source of this deadly virus to humans. According to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, 70 percent of the novel diseases emerging in humans are zoonotic.
Various studies suggest “zoonotic spillover” is often linked with endangered species that are increasingly being hunted for commercial trade in addition to deforestation. Climate change, contributing to the rise in temperatures and other environmental factors, is also believed to increase incidences of zoonotic-based pandemics.
While the primary driver of CO2 emissions comes from fossil fuels and industry, our current global energy-supply system, as it stands, is insufficient to slow the effects of climate change. Globalization in the context of the environmental dimension in the age of COVID-19 and accelerating Anthropocene presents the opportunity to transform our future through a green “renaissance” or “a moment of unprecedented instability” by traveling the current trajectory into extinction.
The global climate is now changing at an accelerated pace that extends beyond the range of natural cycles. A surge of improvement and accessibility in green technologies, moving away from oil dependency, and reducing environmental degradation appears to be essential in combating environmental disasters from climate change to COVID-19.
