But it should also prompt some contemplation of a more potentially disruptive long-term crisis: climate change.

At some point, we’ll adjust, adopt new routines, and muddle through. Perhaps we’ll even tease some consensus lessons out of this imminent and unpredictable pandemic.

In a country consumed with the new coronavirus, chaos reigns. An absence of clear, consistent, and credible national guidance has left states, localities, and institutions largely to go it alone.

Some are acting proactively to forestall the spread of Covid-19. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency on Tuesday. In dozens of districts around the nation, education officials are canceling school. Santa Clara County, Calif., has banned gatherings of more than 1,000. Professional sports teams have banned reporters from locker rooms, and there’s now talk of games without fans.


Others are taking a tailor-the-response-to-the-risk approach. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, for example, has declared that schools will remain open unless and until a student contracts the virus, whereupon school-specific decisions will be made. That, even as New York State has established a “containment area” in New Rochelle, where the National Guard will clean buildings and deliver food to quarantined residents.

In homes and houses around the country, parents are desperately trying to protect their families from a disease about which much remains unknown. In the White House, Donald Trump is frantically trying to protect his presidency from an epidemic he downplayed for too long. One development serves as an apt metaphor for Trump’s troubles: Mark Meadows, the latest in his revolving-door roster of chiefs of staff, has been in self-imposed quarantine after possible exposure to the very virus the president had previously claimed was under control and not a big deal.


So far, Trump’s belated focus on this public health emergency has largely meant turning the administration’s effort over to Vice President Mike Pence, while Trump himself tries to talk down coronavirus fears and talk up the stock market.

Where it all ends, no one knows. But it’s an instructive lens through which to view a crisis we can prepare for: climate change.

Conservatives are busy twitting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for declaring on Monday that “civilization as we know it” is at stake in this election.

Yes, that’s hyperbolic in terms of democracy. Yet look at the disarray the coronavirus has already visited upon this unprepared country. And then consider that we have only about a decade to take the dramatic actions necessary to keep the effects of climate change from becoming hugely disruptive.

Mind you, those effects are already being felt, from extreme storms to crippling heat waves to crop-killing drought to devastating fires to rising sea levels. But without forceful action, worse is to come. Much worse for hundreds of millions.

Unlike the uncertainty that surrounds Covid-19, economists have identified one effective policy component for combating climate change: a carbon tax that will factor the environmental cost of fossil fuels into their use. That will greatly accelerate the shift to greener energy.

We also know that this nation will have to invest heavily in climate-resistant infrastructure, and not just to fend off rising seas on the coasts but also to deal with floods in the heartland. Instead of a big infrastructure bill, though, we are borrowing to fund a large tax cut geared mostly at corporations and upper earners.


And while a group of GOP elder statesmen has proposed a (refundable) carbon tax — and though Trump’s Republican primary challenger, Bill Weld, supports one — that effort has had no impact on the party’s current officeholders.

Instead, a president who denies climate change has made it clear he will do nothing to combat it. Quite the contrary, from taking the United States out of the Paris climate agreement to revoking Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan to his efforts to prop up the coal industry, Trump’s irresponsible actions are impeding the world’s climate effort.

So far, however, this presidential campaign has progressed without a sharp focus on this fundamental difference between the parties. The Democrats recognize the looming climate crisis and are determined to act. Donald Trump’s Republican Party does not and will not.

At a time when the challenge of the coronavirus has underscored the importance of science, preparation, and planning, the choice really couldn’t be clearer.

Scot Lehigh is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at scot.lehigh@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeScotLehigh