Envisioning a Post-Pandemic Future
Words by Alena Walker
www.instagram.com/alenajwalker
Image by Lydia Harper
www.lydiaharperphotography.com
It’s overwhelming trying to navigate schools of thought in the modern world, yet doing so from inside the four walls of government-imposed lockdown is even harder. As we enter the next stage of covid-19 with a more relaxed “code of conduct”, what does this mean for the future? Here, we’re left with the questions of what we want post-pandemic.
“Simple awareness is the seed of responsibility.”
― Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Society has felt like a purgatory of sorts, like a forced meditation on the fundamentals of life where we’ve been left to sit with the morose realisation of our own mortality. But even deeper are the existential philosophies floating in the ether, which we rotate on a loop in our heads, in a detached, delirious fashion. Maybe the reality of what’s happening hasn’t sunk in. Maybe it has and this is a true breaking point. Do we turn a corner towards greater systemic change or do we merely peer around it, hesitancy for the unknown pervading, because ultimately, we don’t want to change; in part, because we don’t know how.
But even this line of thinking, in itself, is tugging on the coat tails of a notion to use this time to be “productive”. As though to enter a period of slower living should account for the production of something.
This idea of productivity in a pandemic reaches an uncomfortable intersection. Pushing agendas for personal progress seems futile, but it’s ultimately engrained as a capitalistic habit of continual output. What does productivity mean, in the visceral sense of the word? More often than not, it boils down to a means of consumption: buying, making, doing.
But right now, the cessation of normality has shifted to a society which isn’t revolving around the needs of the consumer. Instead, it exposes the ubiquitous and invisible worker and subsequent workforces recognised as crucial, despite being branded “low skilled” by government earlier this year.
Evidence on the immediate impact of COVID-19 amplifies an already existing inequality, where younger workers and those on lower incomes will be hit the hardest; those not paid a salary or working on fluctuating hours (like zero-hour contracts) are the most threatened by economic difficulty.
New survey evidence for the UK, called “Inequality in the Impact of the Coronavirus Shock”, suggests the aftermath will further increase disparity across income distribution, particularly between young and old. Arguably, any system which spreads inequality – at a rate far faster than the spread of a virus – is ultimately redundant.
But as Peter C Baker writes for The Guardian, our optimism for change post-pandemic is rightfully founded: “Any glance at history reveals that crises and disasters have continually set the stage for change, often for the better. The global flu epidemic of 1918 helped create national health services in many European countries. The twinned crises of the Great Depression and the second world war set the stage for the modern welfare state.”[1]
The kind of international cooperation to combat issues, like covid-19, defines the same effort needed for opposing an even bigger threat of devastation: climate change.
The dramatic drop in carbon emissions over the past few months is unparalleled by any point in the past century, including the 2008 financial crash. China, one of the world’s largest economies, saw their carbon emissions drop by a quarter since the coronavirus hit.[2] This worldwide decrease has been partly aided by the urgency to work from home, which makes an arguable case for employers facilitating future remote working, in turn, reducing work-based transport pollution. But in this utopic ideal, it can’t be ignored that this privilege would be predominantly afforded to “white collar” jobs.
The rebound from economic stasis looms on the horizon and already emissions in China are beginning to climb. International emissions need fiercely axed by permanent reformation if we’re to reduce CO2 enough to stabilise the warming of the planet. Here lies the call on greater improvements to transport and commercial industries operating with an unyielding practice of emission-intensive and globalised mass-production.
Change of this magnitude is uncomfortable to envision. It feels as far from our normality as to alienate us from its potential. But despite it, the deeper question remains at large: can we continue endorsing an economy whose emissions are tightly bound to the advancement of ecological decline, in affect dramatically altering the lives of generations to come? The simple answer is: no.
If this pandemic has shown anything, it’s our resilience to change. The past few months have brought us closer to our local food, where covid-19 drove demand for veg box sales, which rocketed by 111% in six weeks[3]. It’s brought us closer to community: a neighbourhood-wide weekly clap for the NHS, door-to-door deliveries from independent businesses and drop-offs to neighbours in quarantine.
Over the years, we’ve been gravely hit by a succession of headlines calling for our attention to dwindling wildlife populations, but unpalatable statistics have been given a reprieve. Bird song feels louder than ever, maybe because we appreciate it more within the confines of a lockdown. Nature has come recoiling onto native land and we’re waking up to our need for it.
For the first time, oystercatchers are nesting during breeding season on deserted beaches. Nature charities are experiencing a resurgence of interest in wildlife, with vast volumes of traffic to their site pages offering inspiration on the natural world close to home. The Wildlife Trusts’ webcam had a three-fold increase in hits compared to this time last year.[4] A graffiti artist in France chalked the names of plants and weeds growing through the cracks in the streets of Toulouse.[5]
Without succumbing to ennui and despair, covid-19’s impact has given space for recognition of what’s important and provides a frame of reference for what could happen if we build on this to make positive strides forward. In the immediacy of tomorrow, we can settle with the outcome of our political systems appearing broken now more than ever – it brings hope the status quo will be dismantled in the future.
To finish with another quote from Peter C Baker’s brilliant article for The Guardian: “In this, the optimists believe, there is hope that we might begin to see the world differently. Maybe we can view our problems as shared, and society as more than just a mass of individuals competing against each other for wealth and standing. Maybe, in short, we can understand that the logic of the market should not dominate as many spheres of human existence as we currently allow it to.”[6]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/31/how-will-the-world-emerge-from-the-coronavirus-crisis
[2] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coronavirus-has-temporarily-reduced-chinas-co2-emissions-by-a-quarter?utm_content=bufferae67b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
[3] https://www.specialityfoodmagazine.com/news/veg-box-sales-rocket-by-111-in-six-weeks-as-covid-19-drives-demand
[4] https://www.wcl.org.uk/huge-nature-cost-of-coronavirus.asp
[5] https://www.brut.media/fr/entertainment/toulouse-ce-botaniste-trace-a-la-craie-le-nom-des-plantes-sauvages-f1bbaded-03d9-4f27-9f66-f7bbea25df31
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/31/how-will-the-world-emerge-from-the-coronavirus-crisis