LETTERS: As societies make sacrifices to combat the coronavirus and now that there are vaccines for Covid-19, many feel that political will of the same magnitude is missing in the fight against climate change. With all the world's attention on the pandemic, we have paid considerably less attention on global warming.
Like the virus, greenhouse gases are invisible and remain ever present in our surroundings. Economists attribute the lack of progress to both the loss of a sense of urgency and to the decades of talk that produced little headway.
The Paris Agreement, which aimed to pave the way for a carbon neutral world, remains in stalemate.
The pandemic shows how vulnerable the world is to a global catastrophe. But we're still lagging far behind in efforts to address it.
While Covid-19 has demonstrated that humanity has the capacity to respond to a global crisis, many may not appreciate that climate change is an even more significant challenge, threatening our long-term survival.
Indeed, the impact of global warming is already killing people and devastating livelihoods. One report noted that more than 100 climate change-related disasters occurred in just the first six months of the pandemic, affecting more than 50 million people.
And the world's poorest and most at-risk people are being hit the hardest. Experts have stressed that climate-driven disasters will only get worse.
In the past 10 years, 83 per cent of all disasters triggered by natural hazards were caused by extreme weather and climate-related events, such as floods, storms and heatwaves.
The proportion of all disasters attributable to climate and extreme weather events has also increased significantly during this time.
These extreme weather and climate-related disasters have killed more than 410,000 people in the past 10 years. Heatwaves followed by storms have been the biggest killers.
A further 1.7 billion people around the world have been affected by climate- and weather-related disasters in the past decade.
The good news is the US$10 trillion spent on the global response to the economic effects of the coronavirus crisis is far more than the amount of money the Red Cross said is necessary to adapt to current and imminent climate-driven disaster risks.
According to a report, "it would take an estimated US$50 billion annually to meet the adaptation requirements set out by 50 developing countries for the coming decade".
The Red Cross pointed out that "funding for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction does not seem to consistently prioritise the countries at highest risk and with the lowest ability to adapt and cope with these risks".
None of the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change and to climate and weather-related disasters were among the 20 highest per person recipients of climate change adaptation funding.
Though not as bad as some countries, Malaysia also has a fair share of climate-related disasters. The most frequent are floods and landslides during the monsoon months. It is therefore equally incumbent upon us to do our bit to support the global push for carbon neutrality.
It is good that under the Smart City Framework of the government, many of the nation's urban centres are embarking on initiatives to reduce carbon footprints and be carbon neutral. Kuala Lumpur is one which has declared such a noble commitment.
It is now time to act. We need a vaccine for climate change too.
Professor Datuk Dr Ahmad Ibrahim
Fellow, Academy of Science,
UCSI University
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times