The Unborn Future: How COVID-19 can help us shape our fight against climate change

The pandemic provides an analogue to the climate crisis we are facing and could provide a turning point through which we can reshape human consumption, according to Todd Dufresne, philosopher at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.

"Climate observers are very interested in the coronavirus pandemic, primarily because it demonstrates exactly what a significant, coordinated global effort to curb emissions would look like," says Dusfresne. 

But he points out this pausing of the contemporary economy only amounts to a "blip" in the reduction of carbon emissions — they are down somewhere between 4 to 7.5% globally, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

We're left with the prospect of digging into the systems and structures underlying the problem- Todd Dufresne

This accidental experiment — the halting of business as usual because of the pandemic — is not enough, he says. 

"Since the news isn't encouraging, we're left with the prospect of digging into the systems and structures underlying the problem." That's the thesis of Dufresne's lecture entitled "Catastrophes Big and Small" — the final part of a three-part lecture series he's written for IDEAS, called Climate Change and the Unborn Future: Capitalism, Philosophy, and Pandemic Politics.  

While COVID-19 may have led to less carbon emissions globally, it's not enough to curb the devastating effects of climate change, Dufresne argues.

Permafrost and pandemics 

"Pandemics aren't new … which is why epidemiologists have predicted a global pandemic for decades, and why in turn we have pop cultural touchstones: movies like 12 Monkeys, Contagion, and World War Z, and novels like The End of October. "

However, Dufresne does believe that humanity's unfettered expansion puts sensitive environments at risk — and, potentially, more pandemics could follow. 

"Experts do expect new and even deadlier viruses to appear with the melting of the Arctic permafrost, currently underway," he says. "And these future pandemics, almost certainly deadlier than COVID-19, will indeed be caused by climate change."

The food industrial complex is a defining feature of the way we feed billions of people on the planet.  In much of the world, we're dependent upon this supply chain on pain of starvation and death- Todd Dufresne

While there is not a direct causal relationship between COVID-19 and climate change, Dufresne does believe that capitalism underlines our current experience of living in a pandemic. 

"Capitalism, an ideology of perpetual growth, is in any of its variations the primary driver of climate change," he says. 

He argues that unfettered human growth has led to our further encroachment into wildlife — for example, in the food industry.

"The food industrial complex is a defining feature of the way we feed billions of people on the planet.  In much of the world, we're dependent upon this supply chain on pain of starvation and death," Dufresne argues. 

"In this context, it really can't be surprising that some of our most dangerous viruses, from the Avian flu, to the Swine flu, to Covid-19, are 'zoonotic,' that is, they jump from non-human animals to human animals."

'Just-in-time' illnesses

Dufresne draws a parallel between our globalized economic system and the international spread of the pandemic. 

Dufresne claims that COVID-19 is a "bio-dram" — in other words, a dramatization "of international exchange at the end of the neoliberal era of globalization." 

This dramatization we see before our very eyes, Dufresne claims, should cause us to fundamentally reassess how we live now. 

"If we do nothing about it, then everything changes. If we do something about it, then everything changes," he says.

Randy Boyagoda is a professor at the University of Toronto. He concedes that Dufresne has a point when it comes to the interconnectedness of capitalist systems and the effect this has on the environment: "I think it allows us to understand ... the interconnectedness of markets, of mobility and of the effects, the footprint, the kind of corrosive footprint that these systems can have."

However, Boyagoda believes there needs to be a distinction between how we talk about regulating the actions of elite classes, while also bearing in mind the individual rights of everyday people. 

"What happens when it comes to … those that are coming from very different places and occupy very different places in our society and are choosing lives that contribute perhaps to the very problem, or to some degree are implicated in the very problem at a much lower level?"

Conversely, as Dufresne argues, if we have been willing to fundamentally change our lifestyles for close to two years, then this sense of collectivism can surely be applied to combating climate change. Small actions, such as recycling or choosing to eat meat less, he argues, won't make enough of a difference. 

"There has to be something in between a kind of rejection of individual actions and a whole-scale indictment of this giant system," Boyagoda argues. 

"I think part of my problem is to invest so much in what governments can do instead of corporations. By no means am I suggesting corporations are virtuous and benign actors, but nor would I think the same about government ... just on principle."

But, as Dufresne points out, there might now be a willingness for change.

"Just as the pandemic has knitted together a world of sufferers, it has also knitted together a world of people unwilling to go back to the business of suffering as usual.  Existing inequities have been laid bare; fault lines have been exposed." 

Special thanks to the journal Topia and to the University of Toronto, which kindly granted permission for Todd Dufresne to revise an earlier version of this lecture:

Dufresne, Todd (2020). Climate Change and COVID-19: Structure and System in a Future Tense.  TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 41 COVID Special Issue: pages 46-53. University of Toronto Press.