Bird flu, infected cows and playwright Henrik Ibsen
Is the next pandemic on its way? The dramatic spread of bird flu in American cattle is very concerning.
pandemics
Not with a bang but a whimper: Making our own pandemics
More and more it is becoming apparent that we humans are setting the stage for pandemics with our carelessness and unwillingness to take the necessary preventative actions that might hurt powerful economic interests.
What the H5N1 scare tells us about ourselves and our society
I don’t know whether there is an H5N1 “bird flu” pandemic in our future. We humans think we can build moats around our modern way of life that protect us from the natural world. All the while we have actually been building the equivalent of superhighways into the heart of human society everywhere due to our dense living arrangements and global travel and trade.
Planet Farm
As industrial agriculture encroaches into the last wild places of the Earth, it’s unleashing dangerous pathogens. Time to heal the metabolic rift between ecology and economy
Can the city cycling boom survive the end of the Covid-19 pandemic?
Three leading cities – London, Paris and New York – have all seized on the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to make improvements to their cycling infrastructure to improve mobility, reduce congestion and cut pollution. While these cities are distinct, how do their cycling infrastructures compare?
The coronavirus scoreboard: The illusion of understanding and control
We are (quite understandably) so focused on the current pandemic that we fail to comprehend that the coronavirus was introduced into a specific social, political and economic context. When we clamor for a vaccine and nothing else, we change nothing that might mitigate the effects and spread of the next novel virus.
Pandemic Armchair Philosophy Blog 04-15-2020
What better time to step back and consider alternatives, to review those hidden assumptions about success, happiness and work-life balance, and to do some of the deep thinking that philosophy is famously known and occasionally ridiculed[2] for?
Ben Bernanke: Contrary Indicator
Whether the world returns to some semblance of normal by summer or whether the horror of COVID-19 continues into the fall and winter, the problem is that confidence has already been shattered.
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: the Need for a Progressive Internationalist Response
This pandemic health crisis exposes the injustices of the global economic order. It must be a turning point towards creating the systems, structures and policies that can always protect those who are marginalised and allow everyone to live with dignity.
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.
Pandemic Lessons for the Climate Emergency
Pandemics change business-as-usual overnight. Governments mobilise huge resources to tackle the problem and compensate for its impacts. At the same time, people depend on the civil and public domains for advice, protection, health services and the whole infrastructure of response.