Getty
More and more voices are calling for the recovery from the economic crisis caused by the pandemic to be based on sustainability, and for us to use the terrible warning that COVID-19 has provided so that the new normality we are being forced to define takes into account the real threat to humanity: the climate emergency.
Doctors and health professionals from more than 200 organizations representing some 40 million health workers from approximately half of the world’s medical workforce, have signed an open letter to G20 leaders and their top medical advisors highlighting the 7 million premature deaths caused by air pollution each year worldwide, and calling on them to focus on environmentally friendly solutions to the coronavirus crisis that takes into account air pollution and climate degradation.
Similar calls have been made by a group of companies with a total value of $2.4 trillion, by European political and business leaders, as well as institutional investors and financial institutions, and even by finance ministers, Nobel Prize winners and central banks. The demand is clear: we must seize the moment to reduce emissions and try to bring the climate threat under control, a far more important problem than the pandemic itself, even if it seems hard to believe nowadays.
The future we face is much more dangerous than a pandemic, and it could come much faster than some people expect: plagues, drought, flooding, hurricanes and other extreme events already threaten already weakened economies in the short term, and they are calling for reconstruction to help not only to reduce our vulnerability and prepare, but also to reduce the emissions that cause climate change.
We have never had a better opportunity to increase investment in renewable energies: on the one hand, they are increasingly more efficient and cheaper than fossil fuels. On the other hand, they are likely to create many jobs. And finally, we are facing the imminent collapse of fossil fuels: coal may well not recover from the pandemic, while the oil industry, after the unparalleled negative prices we saw a few weeks ago that some described as “a theater on fire with everyone trying to get to the door,” is going through its worst moments.
Obviously, not all oil companies are equal: while Saudi Aramco, for example, enjoys production costs as low as $8.98 per barrel, Russian companies face $19.21, US players between $20.99 for conventional exploitation and $23.35 for shale oil, while British companies are looking at no less than $44.33. Little wonder that BP is talking about some 10,000 imminent layoffs (15% of its workforce), while Chevron is looking to shed around 6,000, and Shell has announced significant cuts in its dividends for the first time since World War II, bringing into question the advice of stockbrokers down the generations to “never sell Shell”. When even Arab countries are aggressively investing in solar energy, there can be no doubt that things are changing. If you are an investor, keep that in mind.
We should be very careful to not forget the lessons of this pandemic in the short term, otherwise, we will simply be waiting for the next disaster. It won’t be easy. But this is a time for maturity, for eliminating the huge subsidies we pay to companies whose activities are not sustainable, and instead to apply technology to rebuilding the economy on a sustainable basis.
