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Since the pandemic started to show its teeth on our shores in March, there’s been a trend to wave away any other matter other than COVID-19 with an examination of, ‘Just one crisis at a time — we’ll get to climate change after we’ve got the economy back on its feet.’ The only problem is we don’t have the luxury as a nation to solely focus on one crisis at a time.
These last weeks the possible re-election of Donald Trump has been one of the dark birds that visit many of us in the night. As with other such epochal events, of course, how we might react internally to it is of vastly less weight than its effect on the world. Neither early morning wandering nor anything else we can do will change that. But it might shape our response.
The environmental movement in general has a serious race problem. Make no mistake, an ideology that says humans are the problem is a colonial ecology; the Malthusian fear of overpopulation is rooted in racist ideals.
This year has been a ‘unique’ year to study, to say the least. The impacts of COVID-19 on the sector have been not just trying, but simply devastating. I have not set foot in a classroom all year which, I have to admit, is one of the things I have always loved most about studying — the immersion within a learning environment.
Such a profound lack of action from our own government on an existential issue of this magnitude certainly doesn’t inspire hope. So when it comes to climate anxiety as a clinical issue, this is not only a risk factor, but also a barrier to treatment.
Insofar as there is hope in Francesco, it emerges gradually through an intimate viewing of the Pope’s engagement with the ‘hot button’ issues of our day, the environment and climate change, refugees and immigration, violence and conflict, disparity of wealth and poverty, women’s place in society and Church, family and sexuality, and sexual abuse within the Church.
It would be really easy to ‘both-sides’ these debates, but that would present a false equivalence. Surely, if we have learned anything from this year’s lockdowns, we should have gained a far greater appreciation of the importance of community access to outdoor space — and, therefore, of spatial justice?
Pope Francis’ latest encyclical letter Fratelli Tutti is, as we might have anticipated, a reflection on our times. The burden of the encyclical is to commend fraternity and social friendship and deplore selfishness and hostility in the response to the crisis.
The response to COVID has invited reflection about the relative value of one human death (and so of one human life) as compared with another. This is a radical question because it makes us ask whether the value of a human life is defined by economic wellbeing and by potential contribution to the economy, or by deeper qualities.
It’s tempting at this point to blame 2020 for the almost comically bad situation we are facing right. But here’s the thing: this isn’t bad luck or even some kind of testament to the power of numerology. This dire situation was entirely predictable and even, sadly, entirely preventable. We walked right into it — or, at least, we allowed ourselves to be led here.
It may have taken five years but in the last session of the recently completed Senate Inquiry, finally a government department bureaucrat has used the phrase — '…it is a national issue.' Well certainly — 'When it suits,' one might respond.
The pandemic has afforded us a preview of how a crisis plays out when the science is not properly heeded. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists have long been sounding the alarm that the health and safety of large parts of the population are at serious risk, both here and around the world. We are already seeing the damage to health and to the environment that they predicted.