The transition from life before COVID-19 to life with the virus has been abrupt, terrifying, and chaotic. Now we scramble to accommodate this new, unwelcome factor in our lives, as transition we must. This new reality cannot be denied. Whatever it takes: closing schools and businesses, asking citizens to stay in their homes, closing borders. All this done in short order (along with panic, confusion and economic distress), as it is a matter of life or death.
We can look back now and wish we had kept the Office of Pandemic Preparedness in place before this novel virus began to spread. We can look back and wish we had heeded the 2015 warning of Bill Gates, and others, who called the threat of a global pandemic the greatest risk to our security. Then perhaps we could have had a more orderly and gentler transition to life with COVID-19, a transition with less severe economic and social disruption.
Some environmental activists have noted with envy the rapid transition from life before to life during the pandemic saying, “look what can be done in short order when people take an emergency seriously. If only we could get this much real action for mitigating the other emergency, climate.”
We are transitioning to a cleaner, lower carbon economy. The evolution to renewables continues apace despite the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal reports that investors see wind and solar as “havens” with “low risk” and “steady returns” in the COVID-19 economic downturn. Car reporter, Dan Neil, argues that the drop in air pollution from virus shutdowns could well become a tipping point for electric vehicles, noting that “Tesla is now worth more than GM and Ford combined. “
Like the coronavirus this other unwanted factor in our lives, climate change, cannot be denied. The only choice we have is what kind of transition we experience: an abrupt, fearful, and chaotic transition like the one from life before COVID-19 to now, or a gentler, kinder, more orderly transition? For that we need an Office of Clean Economy Preparedness.
What might an Office of Clean Economy Preparedness do to ensure a gentle transition? It could promote a carbon tax to incentivize market-based climate solutions. Over time putting a price on carbon would gradually replace carbon-intensive activities (like driving internal combustion engines) with cleaner technologies (like electric vehicles). A carbon tax could promote regenerative agriculture practices that build soil capable of sequestering and storing significant amounts of carbon. Such an office could identify what training programs we need for workers displaced by the transition so that they could be ready for reemployment staffing new economy jobs, like windmill technicians and remanufacturing workers.
Just as an Office of Pandemic Preparedness might have readied us to face COVID-19, and, at least, minimized the length of time we needed to stay home and shut down workplaces, a well-functioning Office of Clean Economy Preparedness may spare us this kind of emergency disruption. Such an Office could outfit us with clean technologies and a trained workforce in time to avoid the need for an emergency cessation of economic activity, which we now know, thanks to COVID-19, can bring down CO2 levels abruptly. A well-managed transition to a clean economy could enjoy bipartisan support and unite us in facing the other emergency, climate.