Thread by @timbolord

Coronavirus has taught us a lot about how to respond to systemic risks – 10 key lessons are captured in our new report out today: “Covid-19 and climate change: How to apply the lessons of the pandemic to the climate emergency”. Summary 🧵...

https://twitter.com/InstituteGC/status/1379691410421583873

Nature of threats from Covid-19 and climate are of course different – but there are significant areas of crossover. Both require local/national/global solutions, and both susceptible to exponential escalation – see charts below. So what are the lessons?

1: Act quickly. Those who acted fast on Covid had the best outcomes. Those who delayed – a strategy neatly captured by Macron in this quote from last week – have not. Excuses for slow pandemic response don’t apply to climate.

2: Tackle the problem – or face new and more difficult challenges. Just as failure to suppress the virus has led to spread of new variants, so failure to cut emissions leads to feedback loops and much bigger problems ahead (e.g. methane release from thawing permafrost).

3: Economic success depends on positive health and environmental outcomes: For covid, trade-off has been presented as “The more we do to suppress the virus, the worse the economic impact”. But countries which succeeded in suppressing have had better economic outcomes.

Equivalent for climate is: “Action on climate change is costly. Therefore, acting to reduce emissions will reduce economic growth.” But this is based on a false counterfactual (see below).

4: Failure anywhere is failure everywhere. For covid, weaknesses in international cooperation have extended the pandemic, and failure to support low-income countries is both a moral and practical problem – without effective global strategy the crisis will be deeper and longer.

Same for climate: we need to get to zero emissions globally, and do it fairly. Otherwise the climate keeps warming, and those who bear least responsibility face the biggest costs.

5: Build a strategy with sustained political leadership and commitment. Failure to set and implement clear strategy leads to confusion and uncertainty for people and investors. Clear strategy on climate is essential to build public confidence and enable investment to flow.

6: Mitigate and adapt at the same time: for both covid and climate, mitigation and adaptation are sometimes treated as either/or. Essential to do both together – reduce the impacts, and deal with those we can’t avoid.

7: Gather and use the right data: Covid has shown importance of clear, transparent data, and high quality dataviz (h/t @jburnmurdoch and many others); and of being willing to act where data is incomplete (e.g. the UK’s successful strategy of maximising first doses of vaccines).

Same for climate: better data, better used, is key to both policy and communications; and lack of perfect data is not an excuse for delaying action.

8: Markets and technology will provide solutions if government sets the right framework: Covid has shown the power of innovation - and how state and private sector can work together well (vaccines) and less well (ventilators).

Climate emergency requires market and state to work together – governments setting frameworks which drive innovation and technology investment (see below). State understanding its role, and having the capacity to deliver it, is key as @instituteforgov have pointed out.

9: Success depends on the right skills and supply chains: Covid has shown just how dependent we are on supply chains and skills to deliver public policy outcomes – particularly when working at pace.

Net zero needs whole new sectors, and reskilling of existing workers in areas like heating and construction – need to plan ahead for that or we will have insufficient capacity, and miss out on economic opportunities.

10: Build and retain public trust and understanding: Covid has shown the importance of consistency and clarity of comms, focusing on the important (indoor transmission, not whether scotch eggs are a substantial meal), and leaders walking the walk.

Same for climate – public are demanding action, but understanding is low and comms confusing. Urgent need to strengthen public understanding of what’s needed, engage people in designing solutions, and provide clear and consistent messages.

On the upside, Covid-19 responses have shown what can be achieved when we treat an emergency as an emergency - essential that we now apply those lessons to climate.