Covid-19 and Climate Change: A Tale of Two Global Problems

Rolando Fuentes, Marzio Galeotti, Alessandro Lanza and Baltasar Manzano

No 9, GREEN Working Papers from GREEN, Centre for Research on Geography, Resources, Environment, Energy & Networks, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the similarities and the differences between two global problems, the Coronavirus pandemic and climate change, and the extent to which the experience with the Covid-19 pandemic can be of use for tackling climate change. We show that both problems share the same microeconomic foundations in that both entail the overprovision of a global public bad and entail externalities whose correction comes at very high economic and social costs. We leverage on a well-established problem such as climate change, that has been studied for several years now, to highlight the common traits with the Covid-19 pandemic, but also important differences. The Covid-19 crisis is itself a reality check for climate policy, international governance and prevention in general. Indeed, the Covid-19 pandemic is a mock laboratory of climate change, where the time scale of unfolding events is reduced from decades to days. While the former is often measured in days, weeks, months, years, the latter is measured in years, decades, and centuries.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Covid-19; climate change; global public goods; mitigation; adaptation; technological innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 I15 I18 Q54 Q55 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24
Date: 2020
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