COVID-19, the Climate, and Transformative Change: Comparing the Social Anatomies of Crises and Their Regulatory Responses
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comparing Covid-19 and the climate crisis is certainly timely, and the idea to use temporal, spatial, and epistemological analysis to structure findings makes sense. In some places the analysis requires some more editing to be fully clear and convincing, though.
The de-growth aspect raises attention in the abstract, but since it is not actually developed more thoroughly in the paper I would suggest to either drop or expand that section.
I highly recommend that the authors give their final draft to a native speaker of English before resubmitting.
Line by Line Comments
Line 28 epidemiologist [missing s]
Line 36 some democracies [which?] authoritarian governments [which?]
Line 40 cascade [cascading]
Line 42 made it [it was]
Line 46 this exposes [it’s not clear how the fact that economic consequences are more devastating than the health impacts has anything to do with what type of recovery governments would embrace]
Line 47 many world leaders [who?]
Line 49 it seems the policy… [run-on sentence; unclear]
Line 51 corporations [,]
Line 53 “The Great…” [eliminate ‘The’; Also: It’s not clear whether this sentence is intended to speak about the past or the future; needs work]
Line 56 such as EU [the EU]
Line 67 [, and = there should always be a comma before and if it starts a new sentence]
Line 69 then [strike; replace with as]
Line 82 have for years have [strike second have]
Line 106 As UN states [the UN]
Line 109 takes [take]
Line making it even more important to compare with climate change [why?]
Line 112 securitized [meaning?]
Line 113 actors [actions? I know this is a quote, but actors does not make sense]
Line 116 Thus…. [the logic is not clear here? Why thus?]
Line 118 [the UN]
Line 120 [you mean ‘traditional’ as opposed to radical? This is unclear]
Line 124 involving a [x2]
Line 125 which are viewed through a broad lens [a broad lens seems an oxymoron – either you provide a broad overview or you apply a lens to zoom in]
Line 126 are developed [is developed]
Line 140 need to be constructed [?]
Line 159 the risks [are] better evidenced
Line 171 [takes]
Line 193 [is x2]
Line 197-199 unclear
Line 200 [unclear why sovereignty is impacted. Democracy, yes. Legitimacy, yes. But why sovereignty?]
Line 209 [Strikingly…risk -- strikingly suggests that they are losing their power. Risk suggests that it is only your guess?]
Line 214-216 Crises are…perceived crisis. [makes no sense]
Line 231 [what kind - eliminate ‘of’]
Line 237 life and death [event?]
Line 244 [they govern]
Line 247 constructs [it has to construct]
Line 254 connects [connect]
Line 257 necessary [necessarily]
Line 270 in turns [turn]
Line 275 [Any] crisis… [but what is described here – in an incomplete sentence – is NOT complexity]
Line 283 includes [include]
Line 287 knowledge claim [eliminate ‘claim’]
Line 289 Historically [,] certain [kinds]
Line 293 problems [problem]
Line 315 in [the] atmosphere
Line 323 happened [happen]
Line 359 rises [temperature rise]….. different [from] Covid-19
Line 360 rhetorically [what is meant by that?]
Line 365 if not rhetorically at least in practice [unclear]
Line 384 sea-level [rise]
Line 395 and governments [? to governments?]
Line 410 matter [mattered] … was seen [were seen]
Line 415 [Despite]
Line 425 temporal [temporally]
Line 429 “flattening…[flatten]
Line 430 spread [of] the outbreak
Line 432 [as] medicine [the US securing…]
Line 436 [strike are]
Line 440 majority [of], if not all…
Line 446 the Covid -19 [strike the]
Line 452 has brought [have brought]
Line 453 spread [of zoonotic…]
Line 468 necessary [necessarily]
Line 471 is not in itself [are not in and of themselves]
Line 477 developed [develop] … then [than]
Line 479 these [kinds] of initiatives
Line 481 then [than]
Line 488 there are health apparatus that tracks and records [there are health officials that track and record]
Line 491 the effects [strike of] these measures
Line 494 support that is needed [strike that]
Line 495 inequalities affects [affect]
Line 497 [the] sociotechnical
Line 515 remains [remain]
Line 516 health [crisis]
Line 523 [EXCELLENT POINT!!!]
Line 527 use [used]
Line 534 climate change [strike issue]
Line 536 powers [to] rapidly…
Line 537 there are [a] number of…
Line 539 but [it must] also inform
Line 540 concerns [is concerned with]
Line 542 [a] vaccine
Line 551 varies [vary]
Line 552 because [of] different
Line 556 presenting [present]
Line 557 as ‘hard facts’ [with ‘hard facts’]
Line 564 [initiate action in the present]
Line 568 if not [unless]
Line 578 the Covid-19 [strike the]
Line 599 Climate change….. [sentence is unclear]
Line 601 [kinds] of crises
Line 610 Although new...emerge [what is meant by this?]
Line 612 cosmopolites [cosmopolitans?]
Line 618 government [governments]
Line 624 Despite that, the climate change [Although climate change…]
Line 640 to various degrees [in varying degrees]
Line 641 [Bill McKibben and the Divestment movement have forcefully identified the fossil fuel industry as the enemy, though – see McKibben’s 2012 Rolling Stone Article “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math”
Line 642 the Covid-19 [the Covid-19 crises or Covid-19]
Line 645 [are] rapidly becoming
Line 657 [kinds] of crises
Line 661 [Are there…]
Line 672 dominate [dominant]
Line 676 return to work [back to work]
Line 678 helping vulnerable at risk [to help those at risk…]
Line 679 Covid-19, [of] losing...
Line 684 direction [,] avoiding
Line 685 [carbon bubble typically refers to stranded assets invested in fossil fuel infrastructure projects – here it sounds as though it is meant to mean return to emissions-intensive energy and transportation?]
Line 686 [the fact that criticism is growing now in 2020 cannot be ‘exemplified’ by a text published in 2018 – instead of saying “as exemplified by” it should say “confirming”
Line 693 [how can these publications of 2018 refer to the current moment?]
Line 705 on [about]
Author Response
Thank you for this very constructive review and for the detail comments on our manuscript. We have, to our opinion, responded to all suggestions made
- The final section is extended substantially (+600 words), discussing the degrowth aspects.
- All the detailed comments have been adapted to
- One of our authors (A.Standring) has English as mother tongue and he has carefully checked the language.
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper entitled “Corona versus climate change. Social anatomies, regulatory regimes and transformative potentials” presents a robust argumentation of similarities and dissimilarities between corona and climate change with a narrative/argumentative and heuristic approach.
Although I think this is a well-written manuscript, in a proper and fluent English, I see here and there some obscure passages and fragmented (repetitive) sentences.
Overall, I found this manuscript interesting and with a novel approach to this crucial topic, with strong personalism and an attractive stylistic approach (which should be mitigated sometimes).
To what concern the structure I suggest to avid general (and still introductory) statements in part 3, while it would be better to provide some examples in the time and space sections to “demonstrate” your general argumentation (let’s say… this State do this while the other do this…).
You can see my detailed comment in the attached file.
Good luck!
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Thank you for a very constructive review. We have revised in accordance with the suggestion
- In our revision of the ms we have carefully tried to avoid fragmented and repetitive sentences.
- We have not dropped the introductory statement in part 3, but have instead tried to better explain and develop what we mean/implications of our general argumentation.
- We have not made a timeline of COVID-19 and Climate change (reviewers comments #18), but instead a table where the central aspects of their different social anatomies are described (table 1).
- Title changed to a less vague one, better described our analytical approach; made the paper less personalized,
