I am not a doomsayer, but we are on the cusp of an economic crisis unprecedented in human history. We’ve had major depressions like the one precipitated by the 1929 stock market collapse, and several major recessions during the last 200 years, but what we are looking at now is the full collapse of the economic system as it currently exists. It was already showing signs of failing before Covid. An economy cannot maintain itself when money funnels uphill to the 0.01% at an ever-increasing speed (see earlier post The Psychology of Sustainability – Part 3: The Impetus to Choosing Another Path to Sustainability). Are we really envisioning a new kind of neo-feudalism by letting the current powers that be run the show? I’m certainly not, and I doubt many of you are either.
This current pandemic has revealed the key vulnerabilities of both our society and the populations least able to adapt to the crises formed by the lockdowns and closing of small businesses that employ a majority of people – this is especially true of the catering and tourism industries. Indeed, many whole countries like Spain and most Caribbean Island nations for instance thrived only because of tourism. For most other small to medium countries, tourism is one of the top financial components of their GDP. The travel industry in general will struggle to survive in a post-Covid world. I read a short business headline that the very nature of how we shop may also be in terminal threat as online shopping and door delivery is fast becoming the norm. It’s hard to think that even retail giants like Walmart are closing stores and considering following Amazon’s example of business in order to survive.
The old normal has already gone away and the new normal is still up in the air. Trying to ignore the vulnerabilities exposed by Covid has been illuminating to say the least. The impacts on all aspects of society, especially those at risk, has been made obvious, yet as a society we still seem to pine for the days of old as though they were somehow better than they were. Change in never easy, but at some point, the majority of the population must finally wake up and recognize just how destructive and unsustainable was the old consumer paradigm with all its industrial pollution, technological failings and socio-cultural inequity problems.
For starters, we have the golden opportunity to transition to localized clean and renewable energy systems. National level grid systems are obsolete and the pollution created by large scale fossil fuel use are ruining environmental and human health. This energy transition we are in is crucial to building equity since energy is the real currency of our world and how we live. On this planet, life exists in a complex web because of the way energy has been captured by photosynthesis – plain and simple. Our current human systems are predicated on managing that energy capture system, but humans have managed to understand and introduce other ways to capture energy such as water, wind and solar. Renewable energy is already cheaper than fossil fuels and we are on the cusp of understanding how to tap in to energy of the universal field itself. Yet, we persist in extracting fossil fuels with all their inherent problems.
Our food systems are just as fickle with large scale monocultures that degrade land, air, and water and use large amounts of energy disproportionately to the energy grown, i.e. 10 units of energy used for one unit of energy harvested (see prior post Economics and Energetics of farming 1-5 – a reality check on the food system). Food needs to be grown locally and with organic polycultures appropriate to the ecosystem. There was a time when this was the standard model of farming when everything was organic and all additional chemicals to enhance crop growth came from green manure source. Despite earlier medical technology being mainly based on eating healthy food and herbal therapies, I suspect we were a healthier population overall. Our modern top four modern medical killers (heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, and cerebrovascular diseases) were minimal in earlier times – they are a consequence of our westernized consumer lifestyle. The big advance in medical health of the last century that eliminated many of the earlier health scourges can be attributed mostly to sanitation and diet more than drugs. But the modern processed and fast-food diet has taken us backwards. Is this the old normal we yearn for?
I seem to be on a bit of a rant here. Change is here and we can now make some fabulous choices for a better future. Our global society was quite willing to cripple our entire global economy to halt a pandemic, yet it seems oblivious to the less traumatic and more constructive options that solve most of our modern environmental crises.
I think business blogger Annette Franz (Apr 15, 2020) puts what I am saying quite succinctly: “We can innovate if we need to. We can repurpose if we need to. We can be nimble. We can do things differently if we need to. We can band together for a common cause/purpose if we need to. We can change if we need to… In the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Soon the coronavirus crisis will be in the rearview mirror. But the really important question, really, is whether we will be able to take advantage of it to learn something, to solve our most important problems as a society. Back to normal? No, thank you. We’d better start asking ourselves how we can improve that normality and build a better future… The bottom line: You’ll change when you want to. You’ll change when you need to. You’ll change when the pain is so bad that all you can do is change. You’ll change because it’s the right thing to do.”
We cannot keep using quaint little slogans like American politics recently where one side is defending ‘Freedom’ and the other side defending ‘Democracy’ as though the two were immutably separate. I just love how people always manage to find ridiculous ways to polarize themselves, yet ignore the real issues around them. Regardless of political slogans and whomever is in charge, change is inevitable and it is here now and will occur whether you are involved or oblivious to it. You can choose to direct change by responding and adapting to circumstances or just react to what is coming. “Every negative experience holds the seed of transformation” -Alan Cohen
“Dreams are the seeds of change. Nothing ever grows without a seed, and nothing ever changes without a dream” Debbie Boone
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