All Our Covid Failures Can Inform the Climate Fight

It’s not often that we get a preview of global catastrophe, and yet Covid-19 has offered us just that: a cataclysm that affected the entire planet, cost too many lives, battered economies and hit the poorest disproportionately hard. Unimpeded, a warming planet will do all that and more. Like the pandemic, limiting climate change will test governments’ ability to adapt and cooperate across borders. This time, we don’t have to fail.

For all the cheering scientific breakthroughs, it’s hard to look back and see Covid-19 as anything other than a litany of failures. That of governments, which should have been better prepared to use their resources. That of countries, too wrapped up in themselves to learn from each other and help the more vulnerable. The least wealthy 52 countries have 20% of the global population but 4% of vaccinations. The Covax vaccine initiative has fallen short. Deficiencies in record-keeping and testing mean that in much of the developing world we don’t even know exactly how many people have died from Covid-19.