Pandemics, Climate Crisis and the Turbulent Future

 

From Arundhati Roy:

(I was recently asked to speak on a zoom call about the subject of “pandemics, climate change and extinctions” Since I knew very little about pandemics before COVID-19, I spent hours studying relevant articles I have saved over the last 45 days. I then put together the main content for that presentation in the form of quotes from these articles. Below is that compilation, followed by my thoughts about what we should be anticipating and doing given our current reality of economic recession/depression, piled on top of a worldwide pandemic, piled on top of accelerating climate change, piled on massive inequality and the systemic injustice and devastation caused by our capitalist economic system.)

“Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

“We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

Where did the COVID-19 come from?

Most immediately, it came from bats and/or other wild animals infected by them in the city of Wuhan in China, population 11 million. It was likely spread from the sale of wild animals for eating in an open market, possibly/probably with unsanitary conditions.

But this COVID-19 outbreak isn’t a unique situation, though the rapid spread of it all over the world is. What happened in Wuhan emerged out of what has been developing there and elsewhere for decades.

“While the virus was certainly not engineered in a laboratory, this doesn’t mean we haven’t played a role in the current pandemic. Human impingement on natural habitats, biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation are making virus spillover events much more likely, a major new study from scientists in Australia and the US has found.

“The number of emerging infectious disease outbreaks has more than tripled every decade since the 1980s. More than two thirds of these diseases originate in animals, and about 70% of those come from wild animals. Many of the infectious diseases we’re familiar with — Ebola, HIV, swine and avian flu — are zoonotic.

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Source: tedglick.com