Conservation Comment: What our coronavirus response could teach us

Italian Crankworx competitors Torquato Testa and Stefano Dolfin in self isolation in Rotorua. Photo / Supplied

CONSERVATION COMMENT

Comment

Dear Covid-19, can I call you Covey? You've captured the world's attention in a jiffy where scientists and conservationists working on climate change have spectacularly failed.

Don't mistake this letter as friendship.

I'm not planning to get cosy now that you've jumped on to the human host bandwagon, but I do want to ask you - how did you do that?

Not only are governments taking immediate action against you, but you're also causing them to put in place changes that we climate campaigners have been trying to get to happen for years - like flying less, spending less, staying home, eating and thinking locally.

These are the very things we need to do to deal to the climate crisis.

Politicians are saying about you Covey the very things they should be saying about climate change.

Not only are governments taking immediate action against you, but you're also causing them to put in place changes that we climate campaigners have been trying to get to happen for years.

For example, Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in relation to you: "We all must give something up for the good of Italy. We have to do it now."

He's ordered Italians to seek permission for essential travel.

In China travel restrictions are in place for hundreds of millions of citizens and foreigners.

The US congress has agreed to spend a billion dollars fighting you while they still squabble with their president over the indisputable physics of the climate crisis.

I'm sorry for those who are suffering because of you.

Many have died.

I'm sorry for the panic you've caused Covey, but not for the way you've demonstrated that governments and the human race can get their act together in the face of danger. Cheers for that.

I used to be a medical laboratory scientist.

I studied your cousins.

We watched the way you lot interacted and spread with the other microscopic and sub microscopic life forms in our human-centric world.

You're clever little beasties.

Not even officially "alive", you viruses are opportunistic, nimble and ruthless in your mode of action, compact and efficient in structure.

We humans could use your survival skills if we're to combat climate change.

Chinese scientists released your genome sequence to scientists worldwide.

It's a race against time to develop a vaccine to slow your progress.

Climate scientists have released their recommendations and it's a race against time to slow our soaring greenhouse gas emissions and reach a carbon neutral world.

Global emissions are set to pass the most devastating IPCC predictions sooner than expected.

Small bands of us humans are doing what we can but we are like the immune system of an immunocompromised host.

We are few and like you, Covey, the fossil fuel industry and proponents of the "never-ending growth, business and usual" brigade are cunning and will fight to the end.

What you need to know

Last week two of my friends jumped on to OMV's 100m-high oil rig the COSL Prospector as it passed through Cook Strait.

They hung a massive Extinction Rebellion banner to alert OMV and the world that fossil fuel exploration has to stop if we are to survive.

They're two of the most humble people I know but their courage will be a shining light in Kiwi history, beside those who blocked the American nuclear ships from our harbours in small boats a generation ago.

This is our nuclear-free moment Covey.

I'll keep my distance from you buddy but, unwelcome as you may be, just want to say, I appreciate your input.

• Rosemary Penwarden is a Whanganui-born mother and grandmother, now living in Waitati, Otago.