Chair’s Report: Can We Hear? Are We Listening?

 

[Viruses], not lions, tigers or bears, sit masterfully above us on the food chain of life, occupying a role as alpha predators who prey on everything and are preyed upon by nothing.

 

A virus can change the fate of the world; power has nothing to do with being tiny or giant! Power is something related to the power hidden within you!

 

It is June 2020, more than three months after Governor Cuomo put the state on lockdown in response to the Covid-19 crisis. While some areas of the state have begun Phase 1 of reopening, any semblance of a return to normalcy is on some future horizon. There’s no possibility of escaping the reality that we’re all experiencing in every aspect of our lives — each day — the fear, grief, isolation, gratitude, frustration, confusion. We are all here together, apart but not alone.

 

I need to believe that something positive will — if we choose — emerge from this pandemic crisis. I’m certain many of you have read, as I have, the findings of drops in GHG emissions since lockdowns were initiated around the globe. People in metropolitan areas in India and Japan may be wearing masks, but it’s not to protect themselves from the thick, cloying smog that once interfered with athletic events and seeped into homes. At the moment, the skies above Mumbai are clear. Unfortunately, now that the “Great Quiet” is past in China, so are the clear skies. As reported by Yessenia Funes in the May 18, 2020, edition of Gizmodo, according to a report released on the same day by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, pollution in the atmosphere above China now exceeds pre–Covid-19 levels.

 

Perhaps the lessons we should glean from this public health nightmare can be broken into categories, beginning with “relationships.” Because this truly is a pandemic, scientists, virologists and epidemiologists around the world are, for the most part, working diligently and communicating their findings with one another in a global race to develop an effective vaccine against Covid-19, as well as treatment options. If politics and profit are, indeed, removed from the equation, this becomes the perfect archetype for tackling the many facets of climate chaos, and doing so swiftly. Building relationships and cooperation instead of barriers and sanctions is the only possible means to address our shared global emergency in time to avert unfathomable catastrophe.

 

Similarly, this crisis has revealed clear vulnerabilities the world’s citizens face because of globalization, which brings to the forefront the need to radically rethink our economic structure and scale. Burgeoning unemployment urgently suggests bringing outsourced jobs back to this country to uplift and employ capable workers. By extension, such re-onshoring in the US would encourage other nations to generate their own sustainable economies and foster the growth of self-reliance and self-determination. This seems the most logical and humane solution. Many of these jobs could be in the renewable energy sector — wind, solar, geothermal, electric vehicle, energy-efficient building design and materials. Rather than seek supply sources outside the country, the US could build the resources to generate the needed materials here.

 

This is not to say that we should take this as a lesson to become isolationists — far from it. If anything, this global pause has highlighted just how interconnected we are digitally and how effectively we can engage and communicate with one another over vast distances with the expenditure of only a fraction of the amount of carbon consumed in the past. We are one digitally interconnected, interdependent population of an inherently social species. We are also interconnected and interdependent with the entire biosphere of this planet.

 

There are ways we can remain globally connected and responsible by acting locally and respectfully to reduce our negative impact on this earth. We can produce and buy locally, grow food regeneratively, heal the earth and reduce the carbon footprint of transport simultaneously. We can reduce our consumption of factory-produced animal products, sparing people the horror of working in the meat-processing industry and saving the animals from being born into a life of torture. We can decrease our consumption of consumer products and stop falling victim to the mythology of capitalism where endless growth is the penultimate, supreme attainment, and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are the bodhisattvas of our culture. 

 

Certainly, we have also witnessed the weaknesses of current fossil fuel and nuclear energy sources when faced with the unpredictable consequences of a global pandemic. Demand vacillates wildly, while supply is impacted by worker safety concerns and illness in the worldwide fossil fuel industry. The nuclear power sector offers even more frightening scenarios to contemplate. Just what is minimum safe staffing (skeleton crew) for a nuclear reactor? Who determines that guideline? Do we trust them? Social distancing and added PPE are not always feasible in the nuclear power sector, creating a transmission potential in some parts of the facilities not unlike that faced by the meat-packing industry.

 

This pandemic — with all the panic, fear, suffering and upheaval it has generated — has so wrenched us away from any pattern of reality we’ve ever known that, in many ways we are temporarily adrift as we wait for the whirlwind to pass and land to appear. I’ve read accounts of people claiming this is a message from Nature to reconsider our behaviors. If this is so, I say it’s long overdue, but I’m not one to be anthropomorphic about a system of systems. Instead, I think this is a rare opportunity where the whole human species is being given a glimpse of a different paradigm and has the chance to choose whether to leap back into the old skin worn before and close their eyes — or return to the world after the lockdown ends by keeping their eyes open and choosing change.

 

Long ago, a friend of mine told me that in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, being born a human being was considered an auspicious event and a right juncture, because only in the human form was there the ability to attain enlightenment. I may be wrong, but in my mind this series of events offers our species the possibility of an auspicious event and right juncture — to make the transition away from a culture of endless growth, greed and exploitation to one of a sustainable and respectful relationship to all life. I sincerely hope we accept the gift being offered.