I know our focus is entirely on COVID now, but humor me. Global warming also presents a potentially cataclysmic danger to human life on our planet. And yet up until now, every call to global action has been met with concerns about the short-term impact on jobs and the economy. /1

Well if we’d taken EVERY possible step to fight global warming, we could have completely reversed the worldwide trend without having done a tenth of the economic harm that’s already been caused by COVID. /2

There seems an obvious call to action here to shake ourselves out of complacency. Yet I’m worried that when we finally get out of this awful COVID mess, any calls to action on the environmental front will be met with a renewed “jobs!” “economy!” blindness. /3

Surely if we can take one thing from this unfolding COVID disaster it’s that we need to listen to science, prepare in advance, and cooperate to enable transformative human action…and that we need to do all this before a crisis strikes, not once it’s at its peak. /4

I say this, incidentally, as someone who's currently extremely concerned about jobs and the state of the global economy. The point isn't that jobs and the economy don't matter. It's that short-term thinking, and ignoring scientific evidence, is MUCH more harmful in the end. /5