The Habits We're Learning
Toilet paper! The crisis has taught us to localize, act soon, and buy In bulk.
A new crisis has upended the climate change crisis. Coronavirus, also known as COVID 19, is changing the world. From teleconferencing to bulk purchasing, the lifestyle changes forced upon us by the COVID 19 pandemic are inadvertently reducing our carbon footprint, reducing emissions across the world - for now. But most importantly, this pandemic holds lessons on how we should treat climate change, and if nothing else, a warning to act soon.
The COVID-19 pandemic has suspended the majority of non-essential activities and consequently has lowered global emissions. That means travel has been slowed or dropped, as we shift to remote working to maintain social isolation and slow virus spread. Perhaps this shift in remote working can prove as an effective way to cut down on carbon and costs. With the transition to conference calls and virtual meetings with attendees from all other countries of the world, companies may realize that the need for all these attendees to travel to a single location for in-person meetings is no longer required. Besides, individual businesses may find "working from home" is just as productive, yet cheaper than having an office that employees commute to daily. "There's a lot of latent demand among workers for such arrangements, and companies may welcome the change as they realize they can save money by maintaining smaller offices or none at all," Choudhury, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, reported to Yale Environment. These lifestyle and business changes stretch across all divisions, including globalization.
Production of a single iPhone can loop around the world dozens of times and use hundreds of supplies. The blueprint comes from the U.S., display panels from Japan, chipsets from Korea and memory from Taiwan, gyroscope from Europe, and rare earth minerals from Mongolia. All arrive together in China, the world's factory, before being shipped back to the United States. These complicated trading routes are very fragile if one supplier can not deliver, the entire chain crumples. When a global pandemic hits, virtually all companies struggle. As this crisis continues everywhere in the world, we may soon come to localize manufacturing and production to narrow supply chains we depend on (like toilet paper). Localization could signify a massive cut across greenhouse gas emissions, with "more than three-quarters of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with industry sectors coming from their supply chains" affirmed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Finally, now that we are encouraged only to make essential, infrequent store visits, we often buy in bulk and locally. While we stock up on toilet paper, beverages, and food, we inadvertently purchase products in bulk, thereby limiting travel to stores, reducing packaging, and saving money. The amount you save depends on the item, yet some experts estimate buying in size saves you around 20% - 80% on your purchases. As specific items are in short supply, such as milk, consumers are turning to local dairy companies for products. If we maintain these habit changes after COVID-19, we will quickly reduce our carbon footprint with minimal effort. Although most importantly, COVID 19 teaches us to prepare.
Climate Change and COVID 19 aren’t too far apart. Exponential growth is at play.
Source: Our World In Data and European CDC (Updated April 15th, 2020).
Exponential growth is understated. On day one of a pandemic, there was only one case. By two months later, that number has skyrocketed to 986,808 cases (As of April 2nd). Climate change is acting the same way as the coronavirus is, only in a timescale on years, not days. We're already reaching the tipping point of climate change, where our temperatures increase at a rate so fast, change can't stop it. If we have taken significantly less action on climate change than the coronavirus, imagine how high temperatures will skyrocket. While our global health community battles this ongoing crisis, it's up to you to fight the abstruse issue of climate change.
