May 29, 2022

From vaccine apartheid to climate apartheid

The world could vaccinate everyone who wants be vaccinated, but hasn’t. Vaccine apartheid tells us something about how the world is (or isn’t) responding to the climate crisis, too:

But what is in retrospect perhaps the most concerning came in May 2021, when the International Monetary Fund calculated that the full cost of vaccinating the large majority of the world’s vulnerable people would be $50 billion — just 1 percent of the money spent by Congress on pandemic relief….

Faced with the choice — between one future in which everyone in the world was better off through expansive protection and one of more limited vaccination in which the rich were somewhat protected and others remained much more vulnerable — the wealthy nations of the world didn’t take the path that maximized overall protection and prosperity.

Read more here. Then think about how you can join with others to do something about it.