There’s a very important distinction between the concepts of urgent and important. The climate change is both, but not as immediately lethal (for most of us) as is the the urgent coronavirus crisis. Mr. Toles’s avatar is incorrect (I sincerely hope) when he implies that humans can only work on one problem at a time. It’s only our bottom-line oriented media system that makes it seem true: The media doesn’t want to divide our attention, because they know that reader/watcher/tweeter-ship goes up when they amplify one problem to the exclusion of the others.
There’s a very important distinction between the concepts of urgent and important. The climate change is both, but not as immediately lethal (for most of us) as is the the urgent coronavirus crisis. Mr. Toles’s avatar is incorrect (I sincerely hope) when he implies that humans can only work on one problem at a time. It’s only our bottom-line oriented media system that makes it seem true: The media doesn’t want to divide our attention, because they know that reader/watcher/tweeter-ship goes up when they amplify one problem to the exclusion of the others.