The coronavirus crisis and the climate crisis are colliding

This time next week, we will officially be in Atlantic hurricane season. Meteorologically, it’s already started: The year’s first tropical storm, Arthur, formed in mid-May—an increasingly common occurrence in recent years. And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted that this season could see as many as 19 named storms, compared to an average of 12.
Last Monday, Cyclone Amphan became the strongest cyclone ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal, fueled by unusually warm waters in the Indian Ocean. While vertical wind shear weakened the storm before landfall, and evacuation measures reduced the initial death toll, the cyclone still killed more than 100 people, displaced millions, and obliterated the livelihoods of many it left alive. Only time will tell how the disaster magnifies the impact of the coronavirus. “Physical distancing to protect oneself from the novel coronavirus is not possible in the existing shelters,” a student in one Bangladeshi village told Deutsche Welle this week. “Sometimes I feel that the international community has also abandoned us. They have left us to die slowly. The West is largely responsible for global warming, which has resulted in higher sea levels. We are the ones who have to suffer because of it. Still, we don’t see any international initiative for our protection.”
The developed world’s deficiencies of empathy have often sprung from deficiencies of imagination, as Abigail Higgins recently observed at TNR. Americans currently experiencing “climate anxiety” are merely facing the reality that less privileged people have been facing for decades. “We’re nostalgic for a world that for most people never existed—one where there was a guarantee that basic needs would be met and where our children would have a better life than we did,” she wrote. “We’re nostalgic for an illusion—an illusion fueling decades of short-sighted policies, simply because we found it difficult to imagine ourselves living in even a fraction of the precarity others have faced for generations.”

If Americans assume the United States would be able to handle a storm like Cyclone Amphan right now, they’re fooling themselves. The U.S., TNR’s Kate Aronoff recently pointed out, is nowhere near as resilient as many of its voters think:
Government agencies tasked with responding to urgent crises, like FEMA, are chronically underfunded or poorly managed—one weak thread among many in an increasingly inadequate safety net. Millions of people lack health care and are just one lost paycheck away from losing the roof over their head; whether it’s a hurricane or a pandemic that takes it won’t make much of a difference. Despite the fact that we can see coronavirus-size shocks coming from a mile away, there’s still no comprehensive plan for how to design a society equipped to handle them. What would it look like to live in a country that can absorb them equitably?
Read the full piece to see Kate lay out the kind of policies that would make America safer and more equitable in a world of pandemics and hurricanes.
—Heather Souvaine Horn, Deputy Editor