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✍️ By: Team BC1.NL
Ronald Rovers says the real crisis is still to come
In an open letter, sustainability thinker Ronald Rovers drew a sharp comparison between the corona crisis and the ongoing CO2 crisis. In his view, the danger of climate change is at least as urgent, only it's less visible and plays out over a much longer period. The lesson? Don't wait until it's too late.
What do corona and CO2 have to do with each other?
The parallel lies in the peak. With corona, the government is mainly focused on preventing the system from becoming overloaded and the intensive care units from filling up. According to Ronald Rovers, the same thing is going to happen with CO2, only over a far longer timescale, so that what unfolds with corona in a single year plays out with CO2 across ten or twenty. He predicts we're heading for a "CO2 lockdown," a moment when we'll suddenly have to cut back drastically because the effects turn out to be enormous.
Why is there any hurry?
Because there's a hard limit to the CO2 we can still emit and stay under one and a half or two degrees, and emissions are still climbing. The task is to keep that peak as low as possible, giving us more time to roll out all the measures while staying within budget.
Why making homes sustainable isn't keeping up
Do the maths, he says. The Netherlands has 7.5 million homes that all need to reach zero energy. Manage 100,000 a year, already far more than the building sector can handle, and you'll be at it for 70 years, finishing in 2090. Far too late.
Corona and CO2 follow the same logic on a different timescale
With the coronavirus, we're trying to limit the peak load on healthcare. The same principle applies to CO2 emissions. If we don't act now, an abrupt "CO2 lockdown" looms as a way to keep the damage at least somewhat in check. What happens with corona in one year will take decades to unfold with climate change, and possibly with far more serious consequences.
An opportunity for the building sector and for the climate
After corona, economic uncertainty looms. Yet it's precisely in the building sector that the opportunities lie, says Rovers. With millions of homes in need of a sustainability overhaul, we can create jobs and cut CO2 at the same time. The trouble is that the current pace is far too slow to get there in time. What we need is a national acceleration.
Solar panels on every roof
Rovers makes the case for a radical measure, nationalising roofs and covering them with solar panels. Just as the government asked us to stay at home, it can also take the lead in the energy transition, as long as the goal is communicated clearly.
From crisis to structural change
According to Rovers, CO2 emissions are a direct result of what we consume. Travelling less and buying less, the behaviour we're learning out of necessity during corona, ought to become the norm. That's the only way to keep the next crisis from being even more disruptive than this one.
See also:
At the kitchen table in conversation with Roos Janssen National crowdsourcing
At the kitchen table in conversation with Derk Loorbach Transition conversation, the Netherlands after corona
