#rC3 Climate Change and the Corona Pandemic

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Herald [DE]: Ja, einen wunderschönen guten
Tag. Herzlich willkommen zu Tag 4 auf der

XHain Bühne. Unserem letzten Live Talk
hier. Der Talk wird in Englisch sein.

Darum wechsele ich jetzt auch mal auf
Englisch.

Herald [EN]: So. Good afternoon,
everybody. Welcome to day 4 of the remote

chasos experience. Our last live talk here
on our XHain stage, which is as was the

talk about self-driving cars yesterday, a
production we do for the Munich channel. I

kind of forgot to mention that yesterday.
Sorry. Thank you Munich for choosing nice

talks and we are happy to produce them.
And yeah, so today our guest is Dr. Kira

Vinke. She is from the Potsdam Institute
for Climate Impact Research and she is

going to tell us a little bit about Corona
and the climate crisis. And is going to

compare those emergencies. And yeah,
without further ado, the stage is yours.

Kira: Thanks, so much, Felix. And it's a
pleasure to be here and talk to you today

about the parallels of the Corona pandemic
and the climate crisis. This talk builds

upon a research paper that we released
over the summer, and it will follow its

structure more or less. At the end we'll
have time for discussion. So let me just

start by giving you a quick run through
what I will go through. We structured our

talk into several sections called
diagnosis, prognosis, therapy,

rehabilitation, and of course, the
conclusion. And on the right hand side,

you can see the paper. So during the
Covid-19 pandemic, institutional deficits

surfaced, one could see there was a lack
of preparedness. Risks that could have

been averted were not. And there are
significant parallels between this global

health emergency and the climate
emergency, which have become apparent over

the past years. And the questions that
arose were, how can global society manage

the shared risks and avert emergencies and
what can we learn for emergency prevention

and management? So what is an emergency?
This is the first thing we started out

with. And we rely upon a paper that was
published before this on on the climate

emergency. And here already the parallels
unfold. It is called the emergency

formula, and it basically defines
emergency as risk multiplied by urgency.

But what is risk? Risk is the probability
times the damage and the urgency is the

reaction time over the intervention time.
So here you can see a picture of what is

supposed to be the Titanic and the
iceberg. And this is exactly the situation

that that provides a metaphor for what an
emergency is. As I said before, emergency

is identified by risk times urgency, which
is the probability times damage for

multiplied by reaction time over
intervention time. And I will go more into

detail of what this means in terms of the
climate crisis and the Corona crisis.

Basically, what is important to realize
that, is that if reaction time and

intervention time converge, so the time to
avoid damages and the time that is

available to do so, we have lost control.
So it's very important to to avoid this

and we will go structure the talk with
this emergency formula. So let's first

look at the diagnosis, which is providing
scientific understanding. If we do a risk

assessment of the SARS-CoV-2 and climate
change. There are several factors that you

need to look at. For example, in the case
of Covid-19, the contagiousness, the

duration of infections, the transmission
pathways, the mortality, which groups are

more at risk and why? What are the options
available for therapy? This, of course,

changed throughout the duration of the
pandemic. How is immunity structured? Does

it, are you immune after the infection, so
on, so forth. In the case of climate

change, of course, one very important
variable are greenhouse gas emissions and

the concentration of greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere, but also how the climate

system reacts to it. So what is the
climate sensitivity here? Then temperature

rise, the resulting climate impacts, sea
level rise, extreme events such as

tropical cyclones, floods and droughts, et
cetera, and also our adaptive capacity,

how how we are able to respond and adapt
to these different changes. So this risk

assessment, this diagnosis is the basis
for all further steps that we're looking

at. One example here, and that became
quite clear early on in the Covid-19

pandemic is the Case Fatality Rate of
Covid-19. This is basically, this graph is

basically showing you that the older the
age groups are, the higher the mortality

rate is. So this means that elderly people
are much more likely to develop severe

symptoms and are also much more likely to
die from those symptoms than younger

people. In, in the case of climate change,
the projections are also quite clear. Here

you can see two different graphs on
climate change projections. On the left

hand side, you can see how greenhouse gas
emissions would drive temperature change

over time. So you can see the change until
2100. And you can see that it strongly

depends on the emissions pathway we take.
So the blue, the blue areas that you see

here is the pathway that would be in line
with the Paris Agreement that would

require rapid emissions reductions. And
the red pathway is what would happen if we

do not stop growing the emissions and
would lead us to what we call a business

as usual scenario, which could lead to 4
degrees plus by the end of the century. On

the right hand side, you see the so-called
Burning Ember graphic also from the IPCC,

where you can see the different levels of
risks associated with different

temperature levels on the right hand side.
So, for example, unique and threatened

systems such as coral reef systems are
already under pressure right now as we are

around above 1° Celsius, above industrial
levels of average temperature. So when you

look at pandemics, when you look at
climate change, in the case of Germany,

these threats to global security are
already mentioned in certain documents. So

you can see it here and the guidelines on
Civilian Crisis Prevention and also in the

Whitebook of the German military, the
German Bundeswehr. I posted 2 quotes for

you here. For example, health risks can
have destabilizing effects on whole

regions and can undo long standing
development gains. So these aspects are

mentioned, climate impacts and pandemics
are mentioned as challenges for German

security, but there's no concrete strategy
of what to do with this risk. So looking

at the next step, the prognosis, we can
see here, how we define urgency again. So

urgency is a reaction time over
intervention time and intervention time is

a time span from the point that a risk
identified to the point of impact.

Reaction time is a time span needed to
change course and avoid impact. And the

reaction time depends both on hard
factors. So what type of infrastructure

you have or what type of technology you
have? And also on soft factors such as

information networks, political leadership
and willingness to act. So it's not only,

only the system that defines how we are
able to react, but also the choices by

society and political leaders. So again,
urgent action is required if the risk of

damage is high and the reaction time and
intervention time converge. So we know

that control is lost if the reaction time
is longer than the intervention time

available. Then basically, the impacts
cannot be avoided any longer. When we look

at the urgency in the case of SARS-CoV-2
the coronavirus that has caused the

pandemic over the past year, there are
critical time points after which a certain

level of damage can no longer be avoided.
And this critical time spans encompass,

for example, national outbreaks. So it
could have been contained locally or, or

to certain regions within one state. It
could have been that a pandemic could have

been avoided and just limited to an
endemic so that the virus would not have

spread beyond China. And another critical
time span is that the number of intensive

care patients is not larger than the
number of intensive care beds. And even

small delays in testing and tracing can
have large and deadly consequences. So

this means that even if you then invest in
adaptation, meaning you start buying

intensive care units, ventilators, trained
staff, etc., if you are already on this

exponential curve, this will not suffice
to prevent the damage which you could have

prevented if you had started to to act
earlier. And a similar situation on a much

larger scale we are facing with the
climate crisis. We know for intervention

time that at the current levels of CO2
emissions, the carbon budget, so the

amount of CO2 that we can still release
into the atmosphere will be exceeded in

less than 8 years under the current
emissions pathway. And this would mean

that, as I showed earlier, some graphs
that certain risks would materialize. For

example, tipping elements could occur in
the Earth's system as early as 1.5

degrees. And this could mean that there's
potential points of no return after which

these these risks and these changes can no
longer be undone. The reaction time herein

is the decarbonization of the global
economy. So if you imagine that we have to

go to net zero emissions globally, this
requires also time to do so. We cannot

just simply switch from one day to another
and it's time to decarbonize energy

system, to build new structures to, for
example, change the way we practice

agriculture, the way we construct
buildings, etc. All of this requires

certain times until we have both the
technology available, but also the system

infrastructure available to us so that we
can transform all of this. And yeah, the

control is lost when the time left for
intervention to avoid harm is smaller than

the time needed for reaction. So this is
the point at which the Titanic sunk.

Then... even though the iceberg was
visible relatively early on. There were

only a few seconds in which the captain
could have turned the ship and avoided the

impact. After that, it was no longer
possible and the fate was sealed,

basically. So what you here sees is that
tipping points in the Earth's system can

start as early as around 1.5°s for some
systems. And the tipping elements are

connected potentially in somewhat of a
domino effect, meaning that they can start

influencing each other when one system
tips it affects the tipping probability of

the others. So, for example, one element
here is the Amazon rainforest. It can tip,

change it's its character from a tropical
rainforest to more of a savannah type of

forest when the temperatures rise above 4°
or when deforestation reaches a quarter of

the of the forest cover. So this is very
worrisome because right now deforestation

rates are very high and also warming is is
increasing. So this tipping point is

approaching sooner than is comfortable for
our risk assessment. What is the role of

science in this prognosis? So what is
interesting about the role of science and

here is that we learned in the Corona
pandemic that science can help us to

understand risk before they arrive at our
doorstep. So before we can see the effects

of these risks. So long before the impact
occurs, we can, through science, for

example, through epidemiological models,
through climate models, anticipate the

risk and therefore act very early on and
so to say, increase our perceived

intervention time. So we need to assess
the risk. What is the probability and what

type of damages could could occur and what
is the urgency? What is intervention time?

What are critical point that we really
need to avoid? And what is the reaction

time when how can we still intervene? And
we know for both Corona and the climate,

that cascading impacts could overwhelm our
capacity. In the case of Corona, of

course, is mostly refers to our health
systems capacity. And we know that

immediate action is required to avoid
damages such as deaths. And what is the

therapy, our headline for the therapy is
avoiding the unmanageable and managing the

unavoidable. So the unmanageable in this
case is health system overload or collapse

because of extreme demand for intensive
care. And in climate change, it would be

more than 2° global warming. And to avoid
really this tipping cascade and potential

ecosystem collapses that would follow.
This would require mitigation and

prevention of infections in the case of
Covid and mitigation of greenhouse gas

emissions in the case of climate change.
The unavoidable is in the case of Covid-19

disease outbreaks and deaths from
infections that have already occurred and

in climate change, warming and impacts
from already released greenhouse gas

emissions, which we are already witnessing
today. And throughout this entire year, it

has become abundantly clear that wildfires
are destroying habitats of both humans and

animals. And the unavoidable requires us
also to invest into adaptation so that we

can limit the experience of damages that
are occurring. Yeah, what can we learn

from the pandemic, it is that people can
and are willing to change their behavior

if they perceive a crisis and that the sum
of many individual actions matter. So it

does matter if I the way I behave
personally, it does matter. It can change

the course of a global and national
crisis. So this insight is very, very

important for for both crises, actually.
But it also requires strategic and

coordinated action. So we need this
government regulations in order to

coordinate our collective action that
rests on individual efforts. So these are

all insights that are in that sense
encouraging in the sense that we are able

to cope and to overcome very complex
crises. And when we look at how to

transition to carbon neutrality and how to
reach climate stability, we can look at

two approaches. One is a bottom-up
approach, people changing their habits,

and one is this coordinated top-down
approach where we redefine how we want to

govern global commons. And one important
insight is this solidarity that this is

based on. For the climate crisis, it is
clear that we need to change the course of

global emissions here you can see the so-
called carbon staircase up on which a

paper was built that shows that there are
several steps that are required in the

next decades in order to reach net zero
emissions by the middle of the century

worldwide. And there are several low
hanging fruits that could be tackled very

early on. But for this, we need
rehabilitation, we need healing of body

and soul across the generations, because
it is a really interesting situation that

in the Covid-19 pandemic, the elderly
generations are much more at risk than the

younger generations. I remind you of the
slide that I had shown earlier where you

see the case fatality rate going up as you
as the age increases. Whereas in the

climate crisis, the younger generations
are the most affected because in the

future, like the the heap of the mass of
climate impacts. So it is important to to

unite behind the science and to have a
kind of constellation of actors that seeks

to protect the weakest. And this has
worked to some degree at least, and in

different constellations. In the case of
the Covid-19 pandemic, the different

actors who are less affected by the
pandemic moved to protect the elderly

generations. And in the case of the
climate crisis, we need the same thing. We

need a coalition of actors who is willing
to change course in order to protect the

youth. And this is the ethical dilemma, of
course, of weighing economic, cultural and

societal sacrifices against the direct
protection of lives from the infection or

against severe future climate risk
unfolding only in maybe decades, although

we can obviously see already very severe
climate impacts emerge. So one key

ingredient for this is intergenerational
justice. And we demand in this in this

paper, so-called climate and Corona
contract. Where young generations would

pledge to protect the elderly and other at
risk groups by adhering to infection

protection measures. As has been the case
over the past year. Most young people have

adhered to to the infection protection
measures, although they themselves were

not at high risk. And at the same time,
older generations would uphold and

strengthen commitments on climate
protection, such as the Paris Agreement,

such as the European Green Deal to protect
the future of the youth. At the end, I

would like to remind you that already all
future crises will happen against the

background, against, of the climate
crisis. So we have seen, for example, in

the case of the Corona pandemic, that
island nations like Vanuatu had to battle

on two fronts, basically trying to uphold
infection protection measures while also

being extremely affected by tropical
cyclones. And in other cases, this was

also the case like with droughts, with
floods, with heat waves. It's very

difficult to address multiple crises,
which is why we need to address the

climate crisis urgently. The conclusion
here is it's time to act and the different

variables of the emergency formula can be
influenced by mitigation, which lowers the

probability for damage to occur at the
beginning. Adaptation, limiting the

experience of adverse effects of damages.
Governance to be able to efficiently use

our reaction, time. And science, which can
increase the human perception of the

remaining intervention time. So based on
this going back through, to our emergency

formula, we have built a kind of
contingency plan because we know some

damages can no longer be avoided, both for
climate change and the Corona pandemic.

But there are certain things that we can
do to limit the damages and limit the

experience of the damages. With this, I
look forward to our discussion and I close

the talk. Thank you very much.

H: There are already some questions in the
pad. If the audience wants to add more

questions, now it's the time for that. The
1. question is, what do we know about

people, groups spreading misinformation to
make climate change and the pandemic

worse? Is there evidence for my impression
that they are mostly the same for both

topics?
K: Now, that's a very interesting

question. For the case of climate change.
It has been proven many a time that there

are companies, especially fossil fuel
companies, other lobbyist groups, who are

investing in spreading and the spread of
misinformation, basically. So this is

often very well done. It's concealed
behind very fancy looking graphics and for

the layperson, very difficult to
distinguish what is information provided

by scientists and what is information
provided by somebody who can make nice

graphs, basically. So this is this is a
very crucial element why action has been

delayed over decades. I mean, a lot of
this knowledge about climate change was

already available decades ago. We knew
about the risk. Now we even know more

about the risks. Yet people are hesitant
to act. And the spread of misinformation

for the Covid-19 pandemic also goes into
the direction of science denial,

basically. And I think it comes from the
same sort of mindset sometimes, not from

exactly the same sources. Exactly. But one
element is, of course, the the

availability or non availability of
reliable news formats. So in Germany, we

have news formats that I trusted by the
public that everybody can rely on in order

to receive information. But this kind of
publicly funded news is not available in

every country. And this has led to news
channels being more or less on one

political spectrum or the other. And it
has led to the politicization of issues

like climate change and the Covid-19
pandemic, which is very problematic

because. It's fine to have an opinion
about which policies should be made. But

the facts should be the same in our
discussion, even if we have different

opinions about the policies and such. And
I see here also a lot of danger in the

spread of misinformation over social media
networks from which a lot of people are

now relying on for their news source. So
this is also problematic because there's

no real fact checking going on there.
H: Thank you for that answer. The 2.

question would be, given that our CO2
budget will be used up within 8 years

while mainstream politics reject the very
concept of a CO2 budget and fossil lobby

groups seem to be as influential as ever.
Do you think that we already crossed the

point of losing control?
K: Um, I mean, it's it's difficult to say.

For once, there are still a lot that we
can save by our actions. So I personally

have a lot of hope that the transformation
will be more rapid than what from what we

can foresee from this current standpoint.
And there's still a lot that a lot of

systems that are stable for a lot more
time, a lot more emissions. So it's very

important that we keep those safe.
However, we have already lost a lot as

well. So it's really, it really depends on
your standpoint. So if you live on the

Marshall Islands in the Central Pacific,
which are 2 meters above sea level. Yeah,

it's it's we are at a very critical point.
And also, if you're in Bangladesh, if your

child has died from a tropical cyclone,
that would have normally not occurred in

that strength, the point of no return has
been crossed for that child. Right? So

it's it's very it's very dependent on your
your standpoint here in Germany. Here in

Europe, we have the money to fortify our
housing et cetera. We can we can adapt to

some degree of climate change, we are also
not as exposed as other countries because

of our geography. But it's important to
emphasize that it's worth the fight to to

limit emissions now. And I also see some
positive indications that it is now being

taken more more seriously.
H: Thank you, all the good things are 3.

So a 3. question. Especially if I see the
picture in your slide there. Do you think

that the Corona pandemic made the climate
change ignorance worse in the last year?

So that it was more in the background and
people are thinking about like more

threatening problems because that's, they
happen faster than climate change?

K: I don't think so. I think it has still,
it has still been in the media. Still, I'm

able to talk here to you. There are still
people who are interested in this. So I

think it was not completely forgotten. But
of course, the urgency of the Corona

pandemic demanded the attention of
policymakers, etc.. So I it is my hope

that through the experience of the adverse
effects also in industrialized countries

of this pandemic, we realized that we are
not exempt in Germany or in Europe or in

the United States or wherever from global
shocks. It matters to us if there's a

wildlife trade in China. We have to be
concerned about, as should be the people

in Bangladesh should be concerned about
coal mines and Brandenburg. So I think

this recognition that we are connected and
we can lose control even in modern

societies like in Italy, for example,
capacities of the health system were

overwhelmed. So even then, I think we have
come to the realization that we are

actually fragile and we need to take risk
assessment seriously and not just rely on

our good fortune.
H: OK, thank you very much for the answer

and there's another question. If we see
Corona as the speedrun, can we learn

something from our response to the
pandemic, from our response to climate

change?
K: I didn't hear the 1. word.

H: If we see Corona, as the speedrun. So
like that was the fast to react to a

worldwide crisis. What can we learn from
our response to the pandemic for the fight

against climate change?
K: Yeah, yeah. The speedrun. Sorry I

didn't catch it the first time. Yeah. I
think it shows that if we intervene early

enough, we really have a chance to avoid
later damages. So we really need to use

this scientific means of risk and
dissipation in order to to avoid

exponentially rising damages. So I think
this is this is one very happy

realization. And the second is, and I
mentioned this in the talk, is that

everything we do matters. It's not that we
are just helpless in this situation, but

everybody can do something and does
contribute to a larger thing. So in the

case of Covid-19, it's whether I will have
a party with 10 people or not, whether I

will choose to meet several friends after
another or not. In the case of climate

change, it does matter if you are taking
the flights, if you're voting for a Green

Party or for for a party that doesn't take
anything seriously. So these individual

decisions accumulate to something bigger
and they can change the course of a global

and national crisis.
H: OK, thank you very much, and I don't

see any more questions, so thank you for
your talk and hope to see you soon.

K: Thank you as well.

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