20/03/2020

(US) Where The Virus And Climate Intersect

New York Times - Brad Plumer | John Schwartz

Should Airline Bailouts Come With Conditions? And, Climate as a ‘Threat Multiplier’
A near-empty Delta flight to San Francisco from New York this week. Credit...Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Airline Bailouts - Brad Plumer
Airlines are pressing the government this week for billions of dollars in emergency aid as the coronavirus crisis crushes the travel business. With Congress debating how to help the ailing United States economy, decisions like these could have long-term implications for climate change, too.
The nation’s major airlines recently asked for $50 billion in government assistance, warning that they could soon go bankrupt otherwise. President Trump has endorsed such an aid package, though the idea may prove contentious. On Wednesday, eight Senate Democrats signed a letter saying that any aid to airlines (or cruise ships, for that matter) should come with conditions requiring them to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions over time.
“If we give the airline and cruise industries assistance without requiring them to be better environmental stewards, we would miss a major opportunity to combat climate change and ocean dumping,” read the letter, signed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, along with seven of his colleagues.
Air travel has become an increasingly important contributor to global warming.
While aviation still accounts for less than 3 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, those emissions are expected to triple by 2050 as tourism and travel expand. And airlines have struggled to clean up their act: In recent years, air traffic in the United States has grown three times as fast as the rate of fuel-efficiency improvements.
Some climate experts point out that lawmakers have plenty of options to change that dynamic if they wish, particularly if taxpayers are being asked to save the industry.
One possible model is the 2009 bailout of the auto industry, which nearly collapsed during the financial meltdown a decade ago. The Obama administration rescued GM and Chrysler from bankruptcy but also enacted stricter new fuel-economy rules for cars and light trucks. (More recently, the Trump administration has been working to relax those rules.)
Daniel Rutherford, who directs the aviation and marine programs at the International Council on Clean Transportation, offered a few ideas on Twitter for what a climate-friendly bailout of the airlines might look like. Congress could require new efficiency rules or even offer airlines tax breaks to speed up the retirement of older, more polluting aircraft in favor of newer, cleaner models. Or, airlines could be required to publicly report the emissions that result from different itineraries so that travelers can more easily choose less-polluting flights.
“The focus right now is on saving jobs and preventing a deep recession, and that should be front and center,” Mr. Rutherford said. “But air travel is eventually going to bounce back after this crisis subsides. And if the industry gets bailed out without any change to the underlying status quo, we’re going to see emissions continue to rise in the years ahead.”
Aedes aegypti, a mosquito that can spread dengue, Zika and yellow fever, in a lab. Credit...Photo Illustration by The New York Times; photo by Ricardo Mazalan/Associated Press
Climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ - John Schwartz
Is there a connection between the new coronavirus and climate change?
Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech and an author of the federal government’s leading climate change report, the National Climate Assessment, took that pressing question on in a series of tweets on Monday.
She was heading back to Texas from lectures in Ireland and Scotland after the pandemic cut that trip short. She was scheduled for 18 talks and 40 other events over an 11-day visit, but had to fly back five days early. (She has cut her travel to reduce her carbon footprint, so when she does take an international trip, she squeezes in everything she can.)
Her first tweet about the possible connection between coronavirus and climate change summed things up nicely: “The short answer is, very little,” she wrote, “but the long answer is, everything is related.”
I spoke with her on Tuesday and she expanded on those thoughts. Some diseases, such as Zika, are spread by animals like mosquitoes and ticks, and can be expected to spread as a warming world expands the animals’ geographic range. But it’s humans who transmit COVID-19. And we’re already everywhere.
She then dug into research showing the ways that climate change can exacerbate the risks associated with viruses and diseases like influenza in general.
You might think warmer winters could help, since flu seasons tend to be milder in warmer winters. But, she said, a milder season makes people less inclined to get vaccinated for the next season. The next season may start earlier and be tougher, and great suffering would result. And, she cited research suggesting that a warmer climate might dampen immune response.
She also looked to a deeper connection between climate change and disease: When we burn fossil fuels for energy, in addition to releasing greenhouse gases, we’re adding pollution to the air. And research has shown that air pollution kills. A study published this month suggests that air pollution is responsible for 8.8 million deaths each year.
Even worse, air pollution makes people more susceptible to respiratory illness. A look at the SARS epidemic in China in the past found that patients from regions with high air pollution were “twice as likely to die from SARS” compared to patients form regions with cleaner air.
Thus, Dr. Hahyoe said, climate change is a “threat multiplier” that makes many of our problems worse.
In closing, she made one more connection between this pandemic and the slower-moving catastrophe of climate change. “This crisis really brings home what matters to all of us,” she told me. “What really matters is the same for all of us. It’s the health and safety of our friends, our family, our loved ones, our communities, our cities and our country. That’s what the coronavirus pandemic threatens, and that’s exactly what climate change does, too.”

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