A COVID Manifesto
Before COVID…
In 2019, Global Warming was the headline topic across government, industry, academics, and society. The 20th century contributed an increasing carbon emissions in the atmosphere which were largely attributed to a growing appetite for manufacturing, transportation and raw energy production and were wreaking havoc on the environment, causing significant enough temperature shifts to adversely change weather patterns and consequently entire ecosystems. As a knock-on effect, studies showed that natural resources, whether it was agricultural land, forests, fish populations, clean water were all degrading at alarming rates.
For the majority of the world, it is easily ignored. The average consumer is too disconnected to perceive it and will blissfully continue to ignore it unless they directly feel an impact, meaning an environmental failure so significant that it directly cascades to consumers. There was an increasing voice and urgency for global society to recognize it and “do something”.
Governments and industry flaccidly responded… typical policies consisted of defending the “status quo”, to maintain for the most part our current levels of production and consumption, the trend seemed to be that if we just charitably gave a little bit more to the environment things would be better: keep our mobility but do some carbon offsetting, keep our consumption but recycle the plastic packaging and single-use that we accumulate in our daily lives. These were small progressive gestures, but not the impactful initiatives needed to stop or reverse the ongoing damage. Nor was there any serious reconsideration of the underlying social-economic system which was causing it in the first place.
COVID-19 — halting the spread by throttling back the world
In the past couple of months of 2020, COVID-19 has gripped the attention of the world as it spreads across social classes, across communities, across borders, reaching friends, family, colleagues or ourselves. As we learn more about it, we learn that it can be a vicious illness, and as some hot-spots such as Italy and Iran are demonstrating, quickly devastating.
The term “unprecedented” is frequently used (and overused). Although there have been some theoretical consideration of how to respond to such an event, concretely many governments are struggling to put in place and enforce policies to protect its people and reduce the spread and health impact of the disease.
People are being told to be vigilant with hygiene and social interaction, to stay at home, if possible to work remotely rather than commuting to the office, to study at home rather than going to school, to prepare but avoid hoarding (or worse, looting). In short, to buckle down and keep a low profile for an indefinite amount of time.
The social & economic side effects are as dramatic as the virus itself. As workers stay home, manufacturing and commerce throttles down, the complex supply & logistics chains are slowing to a trickle, trying to ensure that essentials such as food, medical supplies can still be made available. People’s typical leisure activities have all but stopped and the associated service businesses with it. Huge organized sports or music events, theme parks, shopping malls, work events and conventions, even restaurants and bars are on hold or closed. National borders have been shut and travel has all but frozen. The general expectation is that the upcoming months will have a significant downward impact on the economy and jobs, accumulating livelihood worries on top of the virus itself.
A COVID Manifesto
What about us? We’ve been on this vicious spiral of mass production to feed mass consumption and desire for immediate gratification, all which has had a heavy toll on resources and the environment, as well as our own lives. The job insecurity and collapse is rough, but frankly up to now it was built up to support this voracious consumer appetite and its parasitic economic effects. Maybe “the way it was” was not a good thing anyway?
One side effect is everyone being forced to ratchet back… spending more time with their families rather than in the office, being more hands-on with their kids education,creating leisure rather than running about looking to be entertained, cooking at home rather than loading up at Wal-Mart.
What is happening to the environmental global warming crisis that preceded? What impact on the environment might this demonstrate if all of a sudden we’re churning out significantly less non-critical goods? If we ratchet back global transportation? What if people and businesses are forced to make fundamentally more economical uses of the resources that they have, rather than indiscriminately consuming as long as there is the money to do so? If we slow the economy of the world down, won’t the corresponding global carbon footprint drop accordingly and subsequently might the environment start to improve? There are already signs that as society slows down that nature is taking the opportunity to recover.
What if the lesson is rather than longing to get back to the previous pre-covid status quo, we instead actually take a step back and a hard look on whether we can use this as an opportunity to pivot to a better quality and more sustainable life altogether? What will we discover in the upcoming months about our core needs for our livelihood? Can we get by, even flourish with austerity? Might this ordeal instead lead us to improve our quality of life and society?
What if this is instead an opportunity for us to reflect and redefine how we live, how we work, how we grow and develop, how we interact with each other? To distance ourselves from superficial, unbridled craving for consumption, whether it be stuff or external stimulus? What if this is a path towards a fundamental change that is more resilient and sustainable for the planet and ultimately more resilient and sustainable for us?
