Time For A Massive Reorientation

It is perhaps to state the obvious that a crisis of the scale the world is currently experiencing is also an opportunity to reorient our perspective and our society. As many of us are now acutely aware, and despite the 'social distancing' we are observing, none of us live in isolation. Let us take this new understanding to heart.

Two letters in today's Star, I believe, effectively convey this.

For years, we have been encouraged to be isolated, as in caring only about ourselves, focusing only on our own well-being, which we are told is solely in our own hands.

We have been encouraged to think of ourselves as islands, our health, happiness and prosperity are independent of the larger community, society or country, never mind the world.

This way of thinking has naturally led to constant arguments against having efficient and caring governments, paying taxes, and public funding even for health and scientific research.

It is unfortunate that it takes something like COVID-19 to convince us, hopefully once and for all, that as human beings, we can never be independent of each other, and our health, well-being and prosperity is very much in each other’s hands.

COVID-19 once again shows the importance of our collective thinking and acting, of the importance of paying taxes and a fair tax system, of good governments, of public funding and of science and research.

It is not the corporations and the myth of trickle-down economics that can save us from common threats, but good governments, public health systems and collective support.

With individual and collective responsible spirit and actions, we can prevent the spread of the coronavirus and eventually defeat this pandemic.

Maria Sabaye Moghaddam, Ottawa

Twenty years from now, we will look back and say, “Thank goodness for this coronavirus!”

What we are witnessing is the beginning of a complete and far-reaching restructuring of life, business and communication.

COVID-19 has removed 80 per cent of the vehicles from the streets in a manner that no environmental activist could. It has removed 90 per cent of the people from buses, trains and subways.

What caught on as a convenience has now become the only way business can be conducted during this period of social distancing.

We are talking about working from home. It is safe to estimate that half the labour force can and is now working from home at some level and to some extent.

The big question is how entrenched will this practice become post-coronavirus.

This is as good at time as any to think carefully about what our priorities should be in the future.

COVID-19 gives us an opportunity to break away from business as usual. It gives us the ability to embrace of new paths; more sensible paths. A possible path that could see us reducing vehicular emissions so much that Greta Thunberg would be proud of us!

The curse of this coronavirus becomes a blessing for those who would use this opportunity to be courageous.

Greg McKnight, Brampton

A Big Fall

The Greeks were well-familiar with the concept of hamartia, which can be defined as follows:

The term hamartia derives from the Greek ἁμαρτία, from ἁμαρτάνειν hamartánein, which means "to miss the mark" or "to err".[1][2] It is most often associated with Greek tragedy....

In literature, it is usually associated with the protagonist's tragic flaw, which often manifests itself as hubris, a kind of exaggerated pride or arrogance, and it never ends well.

Unfortunately, hubris is not a mere literary construct. Its presence is increasingly evident in the world today, and it is fueled by a massive error in our character, our collective tragic flaw: the belief that we are somehow above, not part of, nature.

The result, if you will forgive a cliché, is that the chickens are now coming home to roost.

... a number of researchers today think that it is actually humanity’s destruction of biodiversity that creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases such as Covid-19, the viral disease that emerged in China in December 2019, to arise – with profound health and economic impacts in rich and poor countries alike. In fact, a new discipline, planetary health, is emerging that focuses on the increasingly visible connections between the wellbeing of humans, other living things and entire ecosystems.

Our aggressive, heedless thirst for greater and greater economic gain has resulted in widespread habitat destruction, with dire results:

“We invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes, which harbour so many species of animals and plants – and within those creatures, so many unknown viruses,” David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Pandemic, recently wrote in the New York Times. “We cut the trees; we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets. We disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it.”

While we have always had a certain number of viruses that originate in animals and infect us, such as rabies and plague, up to now, with modern medicine and detection, the threat has been manageable.

Not anymore.

Research suggests that outbreaks of animal-borne and other infectious diseases such as Ebola, Sars, bird flu and now Covid-19, caused by a novel coronavirus, are on the rise. Pathogens are crossing from animals to humans, and many are able to spread quickly to new places. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that three-quarters of new or emerging diseases that infect humans originate in animals.

Kate Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at UCL, says the emergence and spread of these bugs

... are linked to environmental change and human behaviour. The disruption of pristine forests driven by logging, mining, road building through remote places, rapid urbanisation and population growth is bringing people into closer contact with animal species they may never have been near before, she says.

The resulting transmission of disease from wildlife to humans, she says, is now “a hidden cost of human economic development. There are just so many more of us, in every environment. We are going into largely undisturbed places and being exposed more and more. We are creating habitats where viruses are transmitted more easily, and then we are surprised that we have new ones.”

Disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie, says that things will get much worse:

Wildlife everywhere is being put under more stress, he says. “Major landscape changes are causing animals to lose habitats, which means species become crowded together and also come into greater contact with humans. Species that survive change are now moving and mixing with different animals and with humans.”

Human activity is at the root of this multi-faceted problem. Habitat destruction and the world population explosion leads to other sources of infection, not the least of which are markets that have opened up to feed an increasingly hungry world:

Here, animals are slaughtered, cut up and sold on the spot.

The “wet market” (one that sells fresh produce and meat) in Wuhan, thought by the Chinese government to be the starting point of the current Covid-19 pandemic, was known to sell numerous wild animals, including live wolf pups, salamanders, crocodiles, scorpions, rats, squirrels, foxes, civets and turtles.

Equally, urban markets in west and central Africa sell monkeys, bats, rats, and dozens of species of bird, mammal, insect and rodent slaughtered and sold close to open refuse dumps and with no drainage.

“Wet markets make a perfect storm for cross-species transmission of pathogens,” says Gillespie. “Whenever you have novel interactions with a range of species in one place, whether that is in a natural environment like a forest or a wet market, you can have a spillover event.”

The acute crisis the world now faces is clearly one with many origins. No amount of hand-wringing will alter that fact, nor will self-pity change the trajectory of Corvid-19.

And no one likes having a finger pointed at them, particularly during a global crisis, but that is precisely what Mother Nature is doing.

We ignore Her at our ongoing peril.

You Really Don't Need Me To Offer Any Comment Here, Do You?

The Reverend Kenneth Copeland is up to his usual mischief:

Multi-millionaire televangelist Kenneth Copeland tells viewers that even if they lose their jobs because of the coronavirus outbreak, they must continue giving to the church: "Whatever you do right now, don't you stop tithing!" pic.twitter.com/Xp154Fm1rn

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 19, 2020

About That Other Crisis

As we remain fixated on the immediate, acute crisis that has engulfed the world, it is easy to lose sight of the other crisis that continues to engulf the world:

Last year’s summer was so warm that it helped trigger the loss of 600bn tons of ice from Greenland – enough to raise global sea levels by 2.2mm in just two months, new research has found.

Unlike the retreat of sea ice, the loss of land-based glaciers directly causes the seas to rise, imperiling coastal cities and towns around the world. Scientists have calculated that Greenland’s enormous ice sheet lost an average of 268bn tons of ice between 2002 and 2019 – less than half of what was shed last summer. By contrast, Los Angeles county, which has more than 10 million residents, consumes 1bn tons of water a year.

Glaciers are melting away around the world due to global heating caused by the human-induced climate crisis. Ice is reflective of sunlight so as it retreats the dark surfaces underneath absorb yet more heat, causing a further acceleration in melting.

Ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, scientists revealed last year, pushing up previous estimates of global sea level rise and putting 400 million people at risk of flooding every year by the end of the century.

Isabella Velicogna, a professor of Earth system science, has more bad news for us:

More recent research has found that Antarctica, the largest ice sheet on Earth, is also losing mass at a galloping rate, although the latest University of California and Nasa works reveals a nuanced picture.

“In Antarctica, the mass loss in the west proceeds unabated, which is very bad news for sea level rise,” Velicogna said.

The research has further illustrated the existential dangers posed by runaway global heating, even as the world’s attention is gripped by the coronavirus crisis. Crucial climate talks are set to be held later this year in Glasgow, although the wave of cancellations triggered by the virus has threatened to undermine this diplomatic effort.

Yes, we are right to be very alarmed by our current pandemic; however, we must bear in mind that the other one is going to ultimately cost countless more lives, and act accordingly.

From The Ministry Of Truth

Pay no attention to the left side of your screens. Goldstein has been very busy.

This video on Fox News messaging around the coronavirus is really something. They are truly a propaganda outlet for Trump - nothing more - their messaging changed exactly when his did. pic.twitter.com/vSNJSpNqGY

— Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) March 18, 2020

Some Gallows Humour

For technical reasons related to the site, I can't put up the cartoon here, but if you click on this link, you will see something from the Far Side's Gary Larson that is both funny and relevant in a macabre kind of way.

A Larger Perspective

In these uncertain times, we are all seized by concerns about Corvid-19. The prospect of death invariably focuses the mind, especially in the short-term.

Facilitated by fossil-fuel propaganda and an often uncritical media, it is unfortunately easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, one that we have been warned about for a long time - climate change. The following letter, from the print edition of the Sunday Star, strives to achieve a perspective all would be wise to adopt:

Don’t let deniers frame way we talk about climate crisis
Toronto Star 15 Mar 2020

Unconscionable dithering on climate action and on Indigenous rights has caused immense and wholly needless pain, conflict and disruption for Canadians in recent weeks.

It’s 2020; scientists say we absolutely must transition to safe energy as quickly as humanly possible, just to give humanity a decent chance at a future (not to guarantee a livable future, which is already out of reach).

Despite this, multiple levels of government, and three different self-styled progressive parties, are prepared to trample the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), to force through yet another pipeline on behalf of brazen and unrepentant fossil fuel profiteers. All in the middle of a climate crisis. Worse yet, in a flailing attempt to shore up their transparently myopic stance, fossil interests, and their allies in politics and the media, are blasting out vicious invective to confuse and divide Canadians, with a wilful and criminal disregard for any resulting violence. We need look no further than recent propaganda from fossil fuel companies and their allies, including endorsements of sexual violence against teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, and acts of brutal physical violence against earth protectors.

Moreover, this petro-cabal has gleefully spread outright fabrications to vilify Indigenous protectors and their allies, such as claims of “paid protestors” and epithets like “thug.”

The fossil industry pours huge amounts of cash and effort into convincing the public that “energy” means only fossil fuels, that “jobs” must be fossil fuel jobs, that safe alternatives do not exist, and that regular folks acting out of concern for their children and the planet are funded by foreign interests, hell-bent on destroying all that is good in the world.

We do not need to argue that this is a grossly irresponsible invitation to violence; we can point to several examples where earth protectors, merely repeating science and/or defending UNDRIP, have been threatened, intimidated and attacked by people who have been made angry and confused by fossil propaganda, specifically designed to make us angry, confused and divided.

It’s time that the industry, politicians and the media renounce this dangerous disinformation.

The future of all life on earth depends on it.

Patrick Yancey, Antigonish, Nova Scotia