Climate change will still be a threat after COVID-19 is gone

(EurActiv, 17 Mar 2020) Governments around the world are demonstrating – all too evidently – that they are unable to tackle two major crises at once, writes Jonathan Gornall.

Jonathan Gornall is a British journalist, formerly with The Times, who has lived and worked in the Middle East and is now based in the UK. He contributed this op-ed for the Syndication Bureau, an opinion and analysis article syndication service that focuses exclusively on the Middle East.

Remember climate change, the great existential cloud hanging over the human race and the entire planet? Perhaps not. After all, most of us are now increasingly preoccupied with the newer threat from the coronavirus, or COVID-19 – how to avoid catching it, what to do if we do and how to survive the economic meltdown that now seems inevitable in the face of closed shops and schools, grounded airlines and panic in the stock markets.

There is no room in global news coverage right now for headlines about melting polar ice caps and rising levels of carbon dioxide. There was pitifully little coverage when UN secretary-general António Guterres warned that governments around the world are demonstrating – all too evidently – that they are unable to tackle two major crises at once.

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EurActiv, 17 Mar 2020: Climate change will still be a threat after COVID-19 is gone