What can Covid-19 teach us about tackling climate change?
AIA Vitality Ambassador and environmentalist Tim Jarvis thinks our response to the COVID-19 pandemic can teach us a thing or two about taking on climate change. Here’s how.
I’m a fairly optimistic person, I’ll admit. It’s sort-of a necessity when you’re prone to intentionally plonking yourself in extreme survival situations, as I have been known to do over the years. Negative thinking doesn’t get you very far when you’re alone in the Arctic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has tested my optimism somewhat but, through it all, I have found some positive threads to pull on. Of course, I would much rather the pandemic – and all the misery and hardship it has wrought – had never happened, but simply wishing things away does very little to alter reality (that’s another thing you learn pretty quickly in survival school).
I’m an environmentalist. Put simply that means I would quite like for us to move towards a healthier and more sustainable relationship with Mother Nature, and I spend a lot of my professional life working towards that goal. And when it comes to climate change, which has been my focus over the last 15 years, I think our current COVID-19 predicament has a few useful things to teach us.