People are beginning to notice how global crises compound social inequality and are now more likely to become involved in local government and climate change activism.

The argument

Developing countries in the global south are seeing the catastrophic impacts of climate change before the rest of the world is. According to the UN, Botswana is suffering from climate change related droughts that are causing widespread food insecurity, while countries in Southern Asia are at a higher risk of flooding related disasters due to rising sea levels. Global crises are not equalizers; they compound already existing social inequalities. The COVID-19 pandemic is doing the same. COVID-19, unlike climate change, is significantly impacting the lives of relatively privileged people in the United States and Europe. People in developing nations are still less equipped to cope with the virus, as social distancing is impossible if you live in a city that is overcrowded and washing your hands isn't easy when you have no running water. Climate change has not yet affected lower-income Americans as tangibly as it has people living in developing countries, but the pandemic has opened the eyes of people in the United States to how global emergencies compound existing disparities between certain social groups. For example, people who are financially privileged can typically afford to work remotely from home, without needing to worry about losing their jobs or potentially being infected by COVID-19. Blue collar workers, however, must continue going to work to make ends meet - and are more likely to be infected by COVID-19 as a result. Because they have less financial privilege, it’s harder for them to practice social distancing and to access healthcare. This is why coronavirus is disproportionately ravaging predominantly black neighborhoods. The COVID-19 pandemic is therefore triggering a major societal shift, in which people are more aware of how everything that happens in the world occurs in a "social and economic context," as put by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. People are becoming disillusioned by their apathetic and seemingly ineffectual governments, and the ways in which they’ve failed to properly contain the COVID-19 outbreak, which will lead to people becoming more involved in their local governments or in political and social activism. People will be more likely to pressure their governments to prepare for the catastrophic impacts of climate change because they now realize how certain minorities will be affected and disproportionatly harmed.

Premises

Counter-arguments

That crises compound existing inequality is well supported, and the conclusion requires a further step the argument does not establish: that exposure produces durable political mobilisation. Awareness of a disparity is not action on it, and the specific prediction has largely not been borne out. Climate salience fell in several countries after 2021 as inflation and energy costs took priority, and participation in local government — the outcome the argument names — did not shift in the direction predicted. The mechanism is also reversible in a way the argument does not consider. Disillusionment with governments seen as ineffective can produce withdrawal and distrust rather than engagement, and the pandemic's more visible political legacies included polarisation over public health measures and declining institutional trust. Rising living costs tend to reduce support for climate policies carrying near-term costs, which is the opposite of the effect proposed. Most importantly, the analogy between the two crises is weak in exactly the respect that matters. Covid produced immediate, personally experienced harm on a timescale of weeks, which is precisely what climate change does not do for most people in wealthy countries — as the body itself concedes when it notes that climate has not yet affected lower-income Americans as tangibly. The feature that made the pandemic mobilising is the feature climate lacks, which is the ground of the sibling position that current systems are ill equipped. And applying lessons requires an institution that learned one, rather than a public that noticed something.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That crises compound existing inequality is well supported, but the conclusion requires that awareness produces durable mobilisation — a step not established, and one the subsequent record does not bear out, as climate salience fell in several countries when inflation and energy costs took priority. [Rejecting P2] Disillusionment with ineffective government can produce withdrawal and distrust rather than participation, and the pandemic's visible political legacies included polarisation over public health measures and falling institutional trust. [Rejecting P3] The analogy is weak in the decisive respect: covid produced immediate, personally experienced harm within weeks, which the premise concedes climate change has not yet done for most people — so the feature that made the pandemic mobilising is the one climate lacks.