For decades, organizations like The Climate Mobilization have argued that, ‘entering emergency mode is the critical first step to launching the comprehensive mobilization required to rescue and rebuild civilization’ [1]. By using language historically reserved for war, insurrection, or terrorism, climate activists hope to inspire a sense of urgency in governments that have been dragging their feet on making the necessary policy changes. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many in the world lived in blissful ignorance as to what exactly a state of emergency would entail. Its effects on government, society, and our day-to-day were difficult to imagine in the absence of any lived experience. COVID-19 has changed that entirely: as an international community we have learned a powerful lesson in just how quickly everything can change. Now that we are witnessing the real implications of a global emergency, should we still endorse its use in relation to the climate?
By Margaret Born
Emergencies are urgent threats that demand rapid, sweeping action. They justify a suspension of norms at every level, from behavioural changes in a citizen’s daily routine to otherwise unconstitutional expansions of government control. They demand securitisation, a process by which ‘an actor (governments) claims an existential threat (pandemic) to a valued referent object (citizens’ lives) in order to make the audience (citizens) tolerate extraordinary measures that otherwise would not have been acceptable’ [2].
The great advantage of a state of emergency is the swiftness with which it allows governments to act. The central frustration of climate activists is the refusal of states to commit to the scale and pace of change necessary to curb the effects of climate change and maintain the habitability of Earth. If anthropogenic warming is framed as an existential threat and the state does not take the steps necessary to address that threat, then it is failing to protect its citizens.
As of yet, environmental budgets have been woefully insufficient to the task at hand, and a state of emergency could inspire an immediate windfall. On March 26, 2020, less than two weeks after the US government declared the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency, Congress approved nearly $2 trillion USD of stimulus funding in order to minimise economic downturn [3]. Based on its current budget of $6.1 billion USD, that kind of commitment could fund the Environmental Protection Agency for over 300 years [4]. The state of emergency instantly rallied the political will necessary to commit massive amounts of funding towards the pandemic and could potentially do the same for climate protection initiatives. Considering the magnitude and ubiquity of its eventual impact, it would stand to reason that states might rally the same resources to combating climate change in a state of emergency.
In the absence of existential threat, most democracies defer to the preferences of citizens and private companies in day-to-day behaviour. Environmentally detrimental habits of overconsumption, pollution, and waste are slow to change because that change is not typically regulated by the government. The COVID-19 pandemic has demanded sweeping behavioural change with increasingly severe consequences for those who refuse to adhere to them. In Italy, non-essential companies that remained open despite lockdown orders were forcibly closed down and had their owners formally charged with fines and/or prison sentences [5]. Enforcing stricter social norms for the environment could bring about the social changes necessary for effective climate change mitigation, as it has for those necessary to minimise the spread of the virus.
The prospect of rapid, sweeping environmental change would make a state of emergency and the securitisation it necessitates appealing -- but, we must ask at what cost are these changes wrought? A video of ten police officers forcibly dragging an unmasked man off of a public bus in Philadelphia, USA recently went viral [6]. The potential physical brutality of law enforcement points to the dangers of the deal we make when we allow securitisation’s implementation of extraordinary measures: are we willing to relinquish our agency in exchange for greater protection from an existential threat?
If the emergency is grave enough, many are willing to sacrifice personal freedoms to address it. Extreme measures can be tolerable as long as they are limited in time. In the case of COVID-19, the end of these enforced limits is in sight: researchers are working at breakneck speed to develop a vaccine [7], and based on the pattern established in China, proper containment could limit the worst of the pandemic to a matter of months [8]. Climate change, on the other hand, would require decades of concerted effort to mitigate. In the words of Mike Hulme, it would be a ‘quasi-permanent state of emergency’ [9].
With the perspective we have gained from the COVID-19 pandemic, these considerations can ultimately be reduced to one fundamental question: are long-term limits on our autonomy an acceptable price to pay for action on climate change?
Sources
[1] ‘Climate Emergency – The Climate Mobilization’. Available at: https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/climate-emergency/ (Accessed: 24 April 2020).
[2] Politics, security, theory - Ole Wæver, 2011 (no date). Available at: https://journals-sagepub-com.dcu.idm.oclc.org/doi/10.1177/0967010611418718 (Accessed: 24 April 2020).
[3] Coronavirus Outbreak Timeline Fast Facts - CNN. Available at: https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/06/health/wuhan-coronavirus-timeline-fast-facts/index.html (Accessed: 24 April 2020).
[4] US EPA, O. (2019) EPA FY 2020 Budget Proposal Released, US EPA. Available at: https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-fy-2020-budget-proposal-released (Accessed: 24 April 2020).
[5] More than 50,000 people in Italy charged with breaking quarantine rules - The Local. Available at: https://www.thelocal.it/20200320/more-than-50000-people-in-italy-charged-with-breaking-quarantine-rules (Accessed: 24 April 2020).
[6] News, A. B. C. (no date) Philadelphia police drag man without mask off public bus, prompting policy change, ABC News. Available at: https://abcnews.go.com/US/philadelphia-police-drag-man-mask-off-public-bus/story?id=70104383 (Accessed: 24 April 2020).
[7] How Will the Coronavirus End? - The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/ (Accessed: 24 April 2020).
[8] Reuters (2020) ‘China reports no new coronavirus deaths as cases decline’, 7 April. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-toll-idUSKBN21P034 (Accessed: 24 April 2020).
[9] Hulme, M. (2019) ‘Climate Emergency Politics Is Dangerous | Issues in Science and Technology’, 9 December. Available at: https://issues.org/climate-emergency-politics-is-dangerous/ (Accessed: 24 April 2020).