Covid-19 and the climate

APRIL 22ND WAS doubly disrupted. If it had not been messed up by the covid-19 pandemic, as all days now are, parts of it would have been brought to a halt by activism about the climate. This was the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, a festival of demonstrations, marches and teach-ins that took place mostly in America and is widely seen as marking the birth of modern environmentalism. Organisers had hoped that this year’s would see hundreds of millions take to the streets around the world. A huge school strike of the sort pioneered by Greta Thunberg, a Swedish activist, was planned, as well as who-knows-what by way of direct action. A new generation of environmental activists intended to demand a better future more loudly than ever.The pandemic means that this widespread and co-ordinated youthful passion, one of the most striking developments in recent climate politics, is instead being expressed indoors and online. This in itself will inevitably lead some to contemplate how climate change and covid-19 fit together. One of the slogans of the first Earth Day was what the pioneering environmentalist Barry Commoner called “The first law of Ecology”—that “Everything Is Connected With Everything Else”.