Table 1.

Comparing climate and COVID-19 as super wicked problems

	Climate	COVID-19
Time is running out	Years and decades	Hours and days
No central authority	Emissions from anywhere have same global effect	Diseases spread across borders
Those causing problem also want to solve	People locked into, and benefit from, high carbon economy	People benefit from disease spreading social and economic networks
Irrational discounting	Weak commitments: pushed off as future nears	Strong commitments: risk of near term bias, moral hazard