What does the response to COVID-19 tell us about our ability to cope with climate change?

Our society prioritizes profit over human lives due to capitalism.

Question: What does the response to COVID-19 tell us about our ability to cope with climate change?
Position1 of 3›: Our current systems are ill equipped to respond to climate change and must be altered completely
Argument1 of 2›: Our society prioritizes profit over human lives due to capitalism.

As a result of capitalism, our governments are incentivized to prioritize profit and protecting the economy over taking measures to save human lives. The pandemic has forced many factories and corporations to halt production, resulting in a drop in harmful carbon emissions. This, however, is unlikely to continue past the end of the pandemic.

The argument

The coronavirus pandemic has seen a historic drop in harmful carbon emissions due to factory closures and a steep decline in car traffic and commercial air travel. Greenhouse gas emissions dropped 25% in China as factories and industrial plants began to close as the country went into lockdown. The U.N has estimated that, in order to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, our global emissions need to drop by 7.6%. It’s only estimated that our global emissions will drop by 4% in 2020 due to COVID-19. However, if we continued on the path we’re on now, we could see the 7.6% drop that we need. However, in a capitalist system, instead of prioritizing public health and safety, we tend to focus on economic prosperity and profit. Corporations and large companies are incentivized by capitalism to deny the existence of climate change, as adopting more eco-friendly technologies or business practices reduce profits. Controversy has arisen in the United States and in England, where the conservative governments initially hesitated to close business and tell citizens to stay home because doing so would hurt the economy. Instead, they suggested we allow life to continue on as normal, build herd immunity, and view the deaths of the elderly and immunocompromised as “sacrifices.” Many people no longer believe that their governments care about their health or safety. If politicians now are willing to sacrifice the lives of citizens they're meant to represent and protect, it's likely that they'll act similarly when the catastrophic impacts of climate change become more evident.

Premises

[P1]COVID showed emissions can fall fast, dropping 25% in China during lockdown, near the 7.6% global cut the UN says is needed to avoid catastrophe. [P2] Yet under capitalism, governments and corporations prioritized profit over public health, with corporations incentivized to deny climate change. [P3] When conservative governments hesitated to lock down and treated deaths of the elderly as acceptable "sacrifices," they showed they would do the same as climate impacts mount. [C] Therefore, because our society prioritizes profit over human lives due to capitalism, our systems are ill-equipped for climate change and must be altered completely.

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that the COVID response also showed a striking capacity for rapid, large-scale collective action: governments spent trillions, imposed lockdowns, and market-driven innovation produced effective vaccines in record time — which cuts against the claim that capitalist systems simply sacrifice lives for profit. They add that the emissions drop came from economic devastation, not a repeatable policy model, so it doesn't demonstrate a viable path or that only wholesale systemic change could achieve reductions. And both market and state systems posted mixed pandemic records, so attributing the failures to 'capitalism' broadly obscures that varied performance and overstates the case that current systems 'must be altered completely.'

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The pandemic also showed capacity for rapid collective action — trillions in spending, lockdowns and record-time vaccine development — which cuts against the claim that capitalist systems simply prioritise profit over lives. [Rejecting P2] The emissions drop came from economic devastation, not a repeatable model, so it doesn't show a viable path or that only complete systemic change could cut emissions. [Rejecting P3] Both market and state systems had mixed pandemic records, so attributing failures to 'capitalism' broadly obscures that variation and overstates the case for wholesale replacement.