With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, each day more Americans have the privilege of standing on what feels like the other side of the pandemic. Yet they retain a sense of what a global crisis looks like in scale and severity as well as a distant memory of normal life. Straddling these two realities, it is our collective responsibility to reflect and redefine our sense of normalcy so that we are better equipped for the next emergency: the rapidly intensifying climate crisis.
Staying within the Paris Climate Agreement’s 2℃ limit (and preferably closer to 1.5℃ trajectory) while working to avoid some of the worst climate impacts, will require a large, coordinated action—a response very different from the one that we have witnessed in the past year. Drawing on lessons of effective crisis management from this past year can help to better prepare us for the significant challenge ahead.