Beware the Boiling Frog....

Usually, when I write this blog I talk about something that is thought of in a pretty positive light
and I try to show how it isn’t as good as people think. This week in my final post I thought that I
would do the opposite. I know that there has been a lot of negative media for the Coronavirus. I
am not going to say that it is not underserved either. The virus has ground our economy to a halt
and thousands of people have died with thousands more who probably will die. It has been
undeniably horrible and I would never try to dispute that. All of that being said…

This virus has done incredible things for the environment. Across the entire world as people
have bundled into their houses and bunkered down the amount of emissions that have been
released has drastically fallen. Readings from New York City shows that the number of methane
emissions that have been released has dropped by almost half. This sort of change is
something that even the most optimistic climate advocates could never have hoped for even six
months ago. This is not just a New York thing. This sort of drastic decrease in emissions is
happening all across the world. China had entire multi-million people cities in complete
lockdown for weeks, and the satellite imaging of the country makes it clear to see that it has had
a drastic impact on the amount of carbon that they have been releasing.

Obviously to be happy about this is incredibly short-sighted. At some point, we will see people
return to normal life and everything will go back to normal. So what is the positive that we can
take away from this then? Well, first of all, it shows that it is possible for us to decrease our
emissions, but only when motivated. This then begs the question: what could be more
motivating than impending global doom that will be caused by climate change? It turns out the
reason most people don’t feel as motivated to make a change due to climate change is because
of the boiling frog concept. The idea is that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water it will jump
out, however, if you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly increase the temperature it will not be
aware of the increasing temperature and allow itself to boil to death. We are in this very same
situation with climate change. People slowly acclimate to the changes caused by climate
change and therefore they never work to change it. With COVID-19 people were able to see
direct effects so they made immediate changes. So the real question is are people ever going to
realize that we are about to boil, or will we go back to normal in a few months?