SURVIVAL IN THE ERA OF CLIMATE CHANGE PANDEMICS
BY LES LO BAUGH, JR.
We now live in an era of great anxiety, questioning our capacity to recover from the economic, cultural and human trauma inflicted by the COVID-19. The loss of human life, economic production, and societal integrity is likely to continue for at least several more months followed by long term impacts as yet undetermined. This disruption will have both short- and long-term effects on our economy and national security. The resiliency of our personal, family, community, national, and global resiliency is being fundamentally challenged.
“Resiliency” is not the same thing as “sustainability.” But it does include elements of sustainability. Resiliency is the capacity of an entity to survive and function well when confronted with sustained and sudden stresses. Poverty and climate change are examples of sustained stresses. Forest fires, hurricanes, earth quakes, riots, and pandemics are examples of sudden stresses.
Two years ago, I performed a six-month resiliency study of Boston. A city is not defined only by its buildings, streets, and other infrastructure. Human systems, interactions, and conditions are crucial to a city’s resiliency. The same is true for all organization. A holistic approach to resiliency is required. During the Boston resiliency analysis, we identified 16 different resiliency factors:
Building design
Transportation design
Water management
Energy management
Waste management
Climate adaptation/climate change
Social equity
Horizontal infrastructure
Regulatory and legal environment
Environmental
Communications
Interoperability
Health and wellness
Education
Resiliency planning
Food management
These categories have application to all organizations. Some states, including California, have begun to recognize resiliency issues associated with our built environment.* The same is true for other entities.
Certain stresses require policies that cut across individual jurisdictional “turfs”. Immigration, climate change, and pandemics are examples. Immigration provoked by environmental, economic, and human stresses affects communities, businesses, states, and nations. (President Bush ordered the Department of Defense to conduct a short- and long-term study of the impacts of climate change on our national security, including climate change’s impact on human migration and its impact on national security.**) As for climate change, whether it is human-enabled does not determine our resiliency. It is the measures we adopt to deal with climate change that will determine our resiliency.
The current pandemic will eventually retreat, but may evolve. Future pandemics seem inevitable. Had this pandemic been Ebola, rather than COVID-19, the death toll in the United States could have been well over 100 million.*** Climate change continues unabated. The 16 resiliency categories identified above will remain relevant. Individuals, communities, companies, and nations should seriously examine their own resiliency.
Resiliency should not be a political issue. It is a survival issue. Our failures and successes are both lessons. Let us learn from them and become more resilient in the future.
Notes:
* Recent legislation is directed at making the built environment in California more resilient to the threat of major earthquakes. My testimony before the relevant Assembly and Senate committees focused on both the risks to human life and to the economy that the inevitable major earthquake occurs.
** This study included analysis of the impacts of human migration caused by climate change.
*** The Ebola virus is believed to be one of the most ancient. Its diameter is 80 nanometers, making it much smaller than the COVID-19 virus. N95 masks will not protect a person from infection. As the polar ice melts, other ancient bacteria and virus are released for the first time in tens of thousands of years. Halo bacteria is also more deadly than COVID-19.
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Les Lo Baugh, Jr., is a Pacific Council member and president of E Cubed Optimizers LLC.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.
