Why are we so much more afraid of COVID-19 than of climate change? Early lessons from a health crisis for the communication of climate change

In the face of the Covid-19 pandemics, many governments are currently implementing urgent, costly and radical measures to slow down the spread of the pandemics. Yet we haven’t been able, so far, to take similar measures to confront climate change, despite repeated calls from activists and scientists alike to declare a state of ‘climate emergency’. In this piece we try to outline four early lessons from the sanitary crisis to improve our communication on climate change: 1. The need to focus more on the immediate consequences of climate change, and less on the long-term objectives; 2. The impacts of climate change on public health need to be emphasized in public debates; 3. Climate change should not be described as a 'crisis'; 4. Response from civil society will not suffice; top-down communication and measures will also be needed.