Economists call for green recovery plan with focus on climate change to rebuild world economy post COVID-19
The economy is going through an unprecedented recession since countries across the world began dealing with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 virus has claimed over 130,880 lives with nearly 2 million confirmed cases across the world.
In the United States, more than 22 million workers have sought unemployment benefits during a month of coronavirus-related shutdowns with 5.2 million Americans filing last week alone. The stocks have also recorded downturns since coronavirus fears permeated the markets.
In fact, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) even suggests that the world could be going through a "double recession."
“Many of the European countries that are among the worst affected by the pandemic, such as Italy and Spain, already had weak fiscal positions before the outbreak,” said Agathe Demarais, the EIU’s global forecasting director. “A potential debt crisis in any of these countries would quickly spread to other developed countries and emerging markets, sending the global economy into another - possibly much worse - downturn,” she added.
It's clear that the economy has proved to be unreliable when it comes to withstanding major events and fullbacks. So it makes sense why activists and economists have come together to call for a green recovery plan that will not only account for society bouncing back but also climate change.
Last week, Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and six other countries urged the European Union to adopt a “green” recovery plan and emphasized that any rescue package should support the European Commission’s Green Deal strategy to embrace a low-carbon future. This week, European politicians, companies, lawmakers, and activists called for green investment to restart growth after the coronavirus pandemic, saying fighting climate change and promoting biodiversity would rebuild stronger economies.
“After the crisis, the time will come to rebuild,” said the group in a letter to the European Union (EU). “The transition to a climate-neutral economy, the protection of biodiversity and the transformation of agri-food systems have the potential to rapidly deliver jobs, growth ... and to contribute to building more resilient societies.”
Many climate activists have been asking the public not to forget the climate crisis amidst the pandemic. They are also actively fighting misinformation that the pandemic is helping reverse climate change, pointing out that such takes are "ecofascist" which refers to the promotion of authoritarian, fascist ideologies for environmental good.
Traditional recovery measures have aimed at providing short-term boosts to the economy, one needs to only look back to ten years ago when the 2008 recession provided a small boost. However, the pandemic has already erased a decade's worth of jobs from the market in a couple of months due to the collapse in the traditional supply and demand system.
Activists also worry that governments would tend to put climate change mitigation plans on the backburner as they focus on getting the economy back on track. This has happened most recently after the 2008 recession during the recession, carbon emissions decreased, but after the financial crisis was mitigated, climate change as a topic dropped steeply in importance during political discussions.
Here's where green and sustainable stimulus packages come in. In addition to ensuring climate action is not compromised, these plans could also help accelerate investments that would have been deemed necessary years into the future.
Proposals for green recovery plans could include clean energy tax credits, requirements that bailed-out industries like airlines commit to emissions cuts, and investments in green infrastructure, among others. This approach could both ensure that climate action is not neglected during the crisis and help take advantage of the growing energy transition sector that is projected to be worth 23 trillion dollars by 2030 according to the World Bank.
If there is one thing the COVID-19 crisis has revealed, it is that the economy is not prepared to handle major disasters and lacks the resilience to withstand them. With climate change being more important than before, scientists say this is the last decade to get climate change under control global economic recovery plans must account for future catastrophes.