Covid-19 sucks but it could teach us how to avoid the worst consequences of climate change
Four things we can learn from the response to COVID-19 that are critical for climate change resilience.
coronavirus
Hello? Is There Anybody Out There?
With the coronavirus pandemic stalking the asylum seekers waiting nervously in camps and shelters all along the border and in the overcrowded jail cells of the US justice system, inspiration from the border is very hard to come by these days. Thanks to the Angry Tías and Abuelas for shining a light in the darkness, and to London journalist Sarah Towle for sharing their story, and other tales of humanity and heroism from her 2,000-mile journey along the US-Mexico Border.
Trump’s EPA is Creating COVID-19 Sacrifice Zones
We are the forgotten ones, the canaries in the coal mines, the disenfranchised and the disposable. We are communities of color, lower-wealth communities and Indigenous peoples.
We are black, brown, yellow, red and yes, even sometimes white. We are gay and straight. We are atheist and theist.
The Other Emergency Is Crashing Oil Prices
While most Canadians have been worrying about the COVID-19 pandemic, the drama of collapsing oil prices has upended markets and shaken the budgets of Canada’s petro-dependent provinces: Newfoundland, Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C.
Movie Review: Contagion
When the medical thriller movie Contagion came out in 2011, it was widely praised for its realistic portrayal of a global pandemic scenario. In recent weeks, as the real-life outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread around the world, there’s been a surge of renewed interest in the film.
Nafeez Ahmed on Synchronous Failure and Post-Pandemic Systems Change
How many recognize that this pandemic—or some other shock to our interconnected and brittle global systems—could trigger a massive “phase change,” and utterly remake the world as we know it?
I spoke with investigative journalist and systems thinker Nafeez Ahmed about these critical questions.
Overreacting to coronavirus? The perverse logic of panic during a potential pandemic
Problems which start out small, but have the potential to create systemic ruin, MUST be solved when they are small. Waiting to see if such problems become large is courting the very systemic ruin we seek to avoid.
Commoning as a Pandemic Survival Strategy
Commoners and allied movements, disillusioned liberals and social democrats, people of goodwill must thwart the many retrograde dangers that threaten to surge forward under the cover of fear. But we must also, simultaneously, demonstrate the feasibility of new forms of commoning, infrastructure, finance, and commons/public partnerships. Rarely have needs and opportunities been so aligned!
Mental Health, Isolation and Lockdowns
This is a lot clearer in a collective crisis like this one than if it were happening to one person but the essential issues are the same. There is the need for a new “package” of life routines and elements that is sustainable before mental and emotional turmoil will stabilise.
Outbreak
In a year where biblical calamities have rained down upon the world – as floods, bush fires and locust storms– this fracture has not emerged in the highly stressed natural world but from within a globalised human society. After ignoring the cries of Cassandra for decades, the horse has finally entered the gates of the cities, releasing billions of tiny invisible lifeforms that are no respecters of age, gender, wealth, position or race.
The Pandemic Armchair Philosophy Blog, 03.26.2020
It’s hard to take much comfort in our collective cultural and institutional experience with thinking through the kind of pandemic we now confront. Nor do we seem to have anything as valuable and practical as a paddle with which to leverage our movement out of the hole we’ve fallen into.
The Silver Lining of the COVID-Caused Recession is Supra-Economic
COVID-19 has done in a deadly way what steady-state economists would prescribe in a healthy way: putting the brakes on a runaway economy. In fact, the pandemic has slammed on the brakes and jammed the GDP gearstick into reverse.