We are seeing the precursor of how the climate change action will unfold.
When working with the Stern Commission in 2006, a key question was how to treat those countries at the poorest levels of the economic scale. Early on in the debate, we had agreed that pollution had no boundaries. The example of the acid lakes in Quebec from the Ohio coal plants was bandied about.
Now we have a very similar question, where Third World countries have been relegated to the back of the vaccine bus. The shuffle to be first in our own country has started to surface for that first shot, leaving behind the poor and unemployed, let alone neighboring countries.
People who just last week were completely happy to let the elderly die to save their economy are now discussing which populations must be decimated by climate change just as happily as they offered up their own to get to be first in the trough.
Our memories are tragically short, our compassions lost and our intelligence lacking. In less than a year COVID-19 killed more than 1 million people of all races, nationalities and religions.
Climate change will be far worse.
