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Essay 12. Climate Change and COVID-19: Understanding Existential Threats

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Responding to the Climate Threat

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Abstract

The word “existential” is applied freely to attract attention to the risks posed by climate change and the coronavirus pandemic. Their usage is problematic in the absence of a specification of intended scope.

This essay first appeared as https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/565698-climate-change-and-covid-19-understanding-existential-threats.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2021/03/30/497685/climate-deniers-117th-congress/ .

  2. 2.

    https://news.yahoo.com/evangelical-pastor-demands-churchgoers-ditch-101435205.html .

  3. 3.

    https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/499604-we-cannot-ignore-the-links-between-covid-19-and-the-warming-planet?rnd=1590527443 .

  4. 4.

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html .

  5. 5.

    https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/crisis .

  6. 6.

    https://www.swissre.com/risk-knowledge/risk-perspectives-blog/covid-19-is-an-existential-threat-but-so-is-the-climate-crisis.html .

  7. 7.

    https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/02/10/what_is_an_existential_threat_109009.html .

  8. 8.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/warming-planet-means-83-million-face-death-from-heat-this-century .

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Emeritus, Department of Economics and Environmental Studies, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA

    Gary Yohe

  2. Emeritus, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Henry Jacoby

  3. Energy Analysis and Climate Change, Electric Power Research Institute (Retired), Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Richard Richels

  4. Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Benjamin Santer

Authors
  1. Gary Yohe
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  2. Henry Jacoby
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  3. Richard Richels
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  4. Benjamin Santer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gary Yohe .

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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Yohe, G., Jacoby, H., Richels, R., Santer, B. (2023). Essay 12. Climate Change and COVID-19: Understanding Existential Threats. In: Responding to the Climate Threat . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96372-9_12

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