are breached (such as hospital capacity to treat In climate change as in pandemics, the costs of a pandemic patients). They are both risk multipliers, global crisis are bound to vastly exceed those of its in that they highlight and exacerbate hitherto prevention. untested vulnerabilities inherent in the financial and healthcare systems and the real economy. Both are Finally, both reflect “tragedy of the commons” regressive, in that they affect disproportionally the problems, in that individual actions can run counter most vulnerable populations and subpopulations to the collective good and deplete a precious, of the world. Finally, neither can be considered as common resource. Neither pandemics nor climate a “black swan,” insofar as experts have consistently hazards can be confronted without true global warned against both over the years (even though coordination and cooperation. Indeed, despite one may argue that the debate about climate risk current indications to the contrary, they may well has been more widespread). And the coronavirus prove, through their accumulated pressures, that outbreak seems to indicate that the world at large is boundaries between one nation and another are equally ill prepared to prevent or confront either. much less important than boundaries between problems and solutions. Furthermore, addressing pandemics and climate risk requires the same fundamental shift, from Key differences optimizing largely for the shorter-term performance While the similarities are significant, there are also of systems to ensuring equally their longer-term some notable differences between pandemics and resiliency. Healthcare systems, physical assets, climate hazards. infrastructure services, supply chains, and cities have all been largely designed to function within A global public-health crisis presents imminent, a very narrow band of conditions. In many cases, discrete, and directly discernable dangers, which we they are already struggling to function within this have been conditioned to respond to for our survival. band, let alone beyond it. The coronavirus pandemic The risks from climate change, by contrast, are and the responses that are being implemented (to gradual, cumulative, and often distributed dangers the tune of several trillion dollars of government that manifest themselves in degrees and over stimulus as of this writing) illustrate how expensive time. They also require a present action for a future the failure to build resiliency can ultimately prove. reward that has in the past appeared too uncertain Healthcare systems, physical assets, infrastructure services, supply chains, and cities have all been largely designed to function within a very narrow band of conditions. 108 What now? Ten actions to emerge stronger in the next normal September 2020