Enduring the Climate and Coronavirus Crises: What Will It Take to Get Through Both?

Read time: 9 mins

This story is a part of Covering Climate Now’s week of coverage focused on Climate Solutions, to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Covering Climate Now is a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climate story.

While time feels distorted these days, it was only seven months and a lifetime ago that millions around the globe, led by school children, were marching in the streets, passionately demanding action and investment to match the scale of the climate crisis. Today, we’d instinctively recoil imagining those crowds, fearful of the potential to spread more than the idea that humans deserve a livable climate. But in both cases, pulling away from each other, at least in spirit, may be our collective undoing. 

Simultaneously surviving climate disruption and this pandemic — because they cannot be separated — will require us to grapple with two major challenges.