Does the response to the COVID-19 pandemic make serious political action on climate and environmenta

The covid 19 pandemic caused a worldwide recession as traditional industries like tourism and hospitality came to a screeching halt or had to completely reinvent and adapt their business models. Many politicians argued on how to best stimulate a contracting economy, as many sectors such as mining, energy and agriculture still remained highly operational and unscathed by the health crisis, meaning they were the ones generating the most government revenue to support the economic recovery and its financial burdens on national budgets. On the other hand, this absence of human activity led to substantially decreased levels of pollution and increased sightings of wildlife in urban areas, signifying that the pandemic from an environmental perspective was in fact beneficial. As we are now presented with a unique opportunity to directly incentivize or stimulate certain sectors of the economy, namely the more sustainable and ESG ones, the dilemma has risen over whether to achieve economic recovery and GDP growth through the ordinary way and progressively decrease our dependance on fossil fuels and other environmental degrading activities, or accelerate this process by investing heavily on green energy sources and sustainable corporations which prioritizes socio-environmental impacts over maximized profits.

It is undeniable that such decisions have immense political ramifications on a country, and that countries should attempt to balance investing in sustainable areas and companies with also increasing GDP, productivity and overall lifestyle of its citizens. I believe that the response will vary individually on a country-to-country basis, varying mainly on the country’s ability to repay its short-term debt acquired due to the pandemic. With a more flexible budget I believe that serious political action on tackling environmental issues and addressing their causes will be more likely to occur, as in the long term we are talking of a worthwhile investment into the next generations future as we now recognize that our current levels of pollution are unsustainable.

Nevertheless, in the short term, the fact still remains that handing more capital to traditional polluting industries such as agriculture and fossil fuel energy production ill still generate more revenue, be cheaper to produce and will create more jobs due to this increased exploitation of natural resources at a lower price compared to alternative environmentally friendly solutions. It is only in the long term, with the incurred costs of degradation to our natural capital in an unsustainable manner creating poor air quality, water quality and overall, just increased costs with healthcare due to complications of pollution, that the alternative investing strategy in sustainable companies and sectors truly pays off.

In conclusion, countries with short term debt possibly cannot afford to invest for long term increased gains as they need to collect the taxes from those short-term revenues of polluting companies now in order to not become insolvent, and “de facto” drive away foreign investment which they so desperately require in this time of crisis. Consequently, this divide between nations which are more and less polluting would be observed in the North-south economic divide, with on average richer countries in the north investing more into sustainability then their southern, poorer counterparts.