Anti-pandemic rules are the opposite of climate change prevention

Michael Barone

It’s unnerving, and perhaps instructive, that the arrangements that elites have been prescribing for dealing with what they call our most dangerous environmental threat (climate change, formerly known as global warming) are almost precisely the opposite of the arrangements deployed to deal with the more immediate threat of the coronavirus. To reduce the carbon dioxide emissions thought to produce catastrophic climate change, Americans have been urged to cluster in large, densely populated cities. Large apartment buildings with small dwelling units, it is claimed, consume less energy and emit less carbon per capita than 2,500-square-foot houses spread out on suburban cul-de-sacs or newly constructed on exurban farm fields. Lone drivers commuting to work or heading to shopping malls in massive automobiles, it has been argued, waste natural resources and pollute the environment. It would be better if commuters switched to trains or subways and if shoppers walked to neighborhood stores. In this spirit, mayors and city councils have blocked autos from bicycle lanes, hailing bicyclists’ healthy behavior while ignoring the unnerving number of fatal and disabling accidents. All these policies, it turns out, are just the opposite of what’s needed to stop or slow down a global pandemic. Self-distancing and isolation are necessary, not clustering. The broad aisles of the suburban supermarket and disposable plastic bags are less likely to transmit disease than the close quarters of the local mini-market and a many-times-used recyclable shopping bag. Heading in your car to a drive-in testing center is better than riding the subway and waiting in a crowded line. So it’s no surprise that the part of the United States hardest hit by COVID-19 so far appears to be metro New York City, to the point that the federal government has advised people traveling from there to isolate themselves for 14 days. Nor is it surprising that the hardest-hit part of Italy is around its largest metro area, Milan, and the densely populated and economically productive Po Valley just to the south. Or that the hardest-hit part of Spain is metro Madrid...MORE