Climate-smart stimulus.

Byline: Ali Tauqeer Sheikh

THE stimulus packages promised by the federal and provincial governments will certainly offer an important and immediate reprieve in these times, but will have very limited utility in putting the economy on track for inclusive and sustainable development. They will hardly help us 'build back fast', let alone 'build back better'. Pakistan's stimulus packages need to suit a sluggish economy that is constantly under siege from climate change-induced disasters.

The same politicians who failed the world in the climate crisis are now failing us in this pandemic. Their denialism, rooted in anti-science convictions and political expediencies, has already led to many unnecessary deaths from the virus and brought global temperatures to a perilous junction.

President Trump's impatience to reopen the economy is rooted in the American economic system and his electoral considerations. The biggest stimulus package in human history by the US administration, valued at more than $2.2 trillion, is primarily geared towards avoiding individual and corporate bankruptcies rather than building a climate-smart economy, which promotes green jobs, renewable energy, and transitions to climate-resilient social and physical infrastructure. Far from drawing lessons from the New Deal of the 1930s, or adapting ideas from the Green New Deal that many Democrats have pushed to become an election agenda, the CARES Act has failed to include any climate provisions. In fact, President Trump has succeeded in keeping a tight lid on any aspirations to bring environment and climate concerns into the relief package. The biggest recipients will be the most polluting big businesses such as the airline and fossil fuel industries, but without any quid pro quo to cut their emissions.

Ironically, the most pollution-heavy industries have contributed the most towards weakening immune systems. The fossil fuel industry, for example, has literally made the pandemic deadlier for the poor, who are more susceptible to disease. Likewise, populations bearing the heaviest burden of the pandemic's health and economic effects are the same as those bearing the brunt of fossil fuel pollution.

The pandemic has highlighted how inseparably linked the climate and pandemic crises are.

The pandemic has highlighted how intrinsically and inseparably linked the climate and pandemic crises are. Clearly, an important lesson to learn from the pandemic is that there is a global failure in...