Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Brian Davey The point to make in this article is of the need to self isolate and/or practice social distancing, at the same time as maintaining economic activity as best we can. There will be no one size fits all ways of doing it and each person will have to improvise during this crisis.
Public Health. What is that, really? It’s not just the services of research institutions, public education, medical professionals, hospitals, equipment, medicines, emergency rooms, insurance and such. It’s a healthy public. The question arising now is: What can we do, as a society, to support a healthy public?
At Post Carbon Institute we have been closely monitoring the global COVID-19 pandemic and encouraging our staff, volunteers, and broader community to take great caution and practice social distancing. But that doesn’t mean we should disengage.
If we really care about the health of people and planet, we should think twice before we decide to spend money on accelerating this destructive trajectory. While it is essential that jobs are maintained and undue hardship is avoided, propping up the status quo is not the only option available.
Artists are enlisted to help ‘deliver the message’ and ‘raise awareness’, as though art were a sophisticated extension of the PR department or a cheap alternative to an advertising agency. This is not only a misconception of what art is and what it’s good at, it’s also a misconception of the knowledge work that remains, when the scientists reach the end of their road.
There are many proposals for radical economies from progressive economists, activists and think tanks. Artists are increasingly joining these debates with speculative proposals and unconventional methodologies.
All together, these techniques add up to an effective, inexpensive, low-impact garden-starting regime. There’s room for improvement, of course, which just keeps my life from getting boring.
The world is not doing well in its efforts to meet the existing voluntary goals of the Paris climate accord—targets that collectively were known to be inadequate from the day the accord first came into force.
Whether the Sanders campaign seizes this opportunity, or an alternate framework for collective action arises, a mass movement response to the coronavirus pandemic cannot come too soon. For our own sake, and that of our society as a whole, let us help the drive toward solidarity emerge.
Yet, as I said, I am not feeling that helpless form of resignation. You shouldn’t either. And if you’re looking for some inspiration and have some free time in quarantine, pick up a book I hadn’t read in 2008 called A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit. In it, she details the astounding things people do to help each other in times of extreme distress.
Critical to this change is securing the right support from Government to incentivise more farmers to grow more fruit and vegetables, using agroecological and regenerative practices, in a financially viable way. By doing this, it could be possible for the UK to produce affordable and healthy food that guarantees food security and looks after the environment.
Global oil consumption is in free-fall, heading for the biggest annual contraction in history, as more countries introduce unprecedented measures to fight the coronavirus outbreak. Travel bans, work-from-home, canceled vacations, and disrupted supply chains across the world all mean reduced demand for fuel.
