Coronavirus and the Environment: A Case Study in Storytelling
As countries around the world have been struck by COVID-19, massive behavioral shifts have prompted reports of everything from endangered wild cats in the streets of India to increased bear populations in Yosemite. While many people are lauding these changes, misinformation, genuine mistakes, and more sinister arguments about the worth of human life are spreading all over the internet. This is the first pandemic in human history to happen with widespread access to the internet, and so this is a unique case study in how interconnected societies respond to an existential crisis, and also in how people view and value the environment.
In a quick survey of the many viral videos and stories of environmentally-related COVID-19 stories, they can be broken down into two categories: large scale trends of climate, carbon, and oil, and stories of changing animal behavior. Of these categories we can ask two questions: is this truly a coronavirus related trend, and if so, how long will it last?
It’s also important to recognize a more sinister argument in some of these stories, best summarized by the now well parodied phrase “the earth is healing, we are the real virus”. Naomi Klein has even called such sentiments “eco-facism”, saying that they effectively argue that in order to achieve widespread environmental change, millions will have to die. That argument has quickly been contested by a wide swath of activists, academics, and health professionals. In analyzing these stories, it is important to recognize that widespread human death is not a valid policy solution to any environmental issue, regardless of its urgency.
Reports of animals “reclaiming” spaces typically occupied by humans have surged. Hundreds of millions of people have adjusted to a new normal of quarantine and government-sanction stay-at-home orders, but what do these reports actually mean? Some reports are disingenuous or misleading, like a recent Los Angeles Times tweet which cites not a scientist, but a local hotel worker -it’s assertion that the bear population in Yosemite has quadrupled in three weeks. Others, like photos of wild goats and boars wandering the streets of European towns, show us the extent to which humans have modified the natural world, and also how quickly that modification can reverse.
Other stories, such as recent plummeting oil prices, and decreases in carbon emissions in China, are a different type of story. Environmentalists are torn between finally seeing the volatility of oil markets be demonstrated on a large scale, and a fear that the economic and societal cost of change will be too great for the majority of people. In September 2019, the University of California system divested from fossil fuels because of their financial risk, the single largest action in the divestment movement’s history. Will more firms follow suit, as the price of oil futures fall below zero dollars, or will they view it as an isolated anomaly in an otherwise stable market? Such a global demonstration of market volatility will probably leave an imprint on the psyche of many investors, but it doesn’t change the global financial structure, which is so tied up in oil money. The other worry many environmentalists have is the possibility of backlash once the pandemic is over, that people will see the relative drop in carbon emissions and connect it to the life-changing impacts of the pandemic, effectively eliminating a willingness to change behavior. What the oil market will look like in two years is still unknowable, but it is clear that this respite in carbon emissions is not cause for celebration.
The world is in an objectively worse place than it was only a couple months ago, and no amount of environmental benefit is worth millions of lives. While the climate crisis is still ongoing, our efforts are best used right now doing whatever we can to limit the destruction of this virus and to care for the people who need it the most. But this crisis is the first of it’s kind to happen with widespread access to the internet, and being able to see billions of people react in real time can give us insight into human behavior. How we react in times of great crisis, where we look for comfort and solace, is the truest reflection of our values. Overwhelmingly we have seen stories of human courage and compassion, as well as stories of the resiliency and vitality of the natural world. The simple fact that we find beauty and comfort in nature during one of the most challenging times of the last quarter century should tell us something profound about us as a species, and our capacity to change.
Jacob is a writer for the Environmental Justice and Politics team.
