The new way of life to come?

I think it should be obvious by now that we are looking at a different economic scenario than we have been used to. In particular the enormous number of aircraft flying and now not flying. The benefits (not in employment I’m sorry to say) have been pretty clear. Clear skies, less, much less pollution. In other words we have to develop a type of economy that perhaps would look a lot more like it was hundreds or so years ago. More self-sufficiency. Why should apples or lambs meat come from 6000 miles away? In cities like Birmingham or London, there should now be electric buses with more space for individuals. Car-less city centres or even whole cities, with bike lanes for bikes and electric mopeds. We have to tackle urban pollution, and plastics in particular. Everybody has to take much more care about what and how they throw away stuff. We simply must respect nature and all the things that live. We need food but we don’t have to factory farm. In any case we should eat less meat. Much less.

I suppose there are no easy answers, whatever we do there is a negative side to it somewhere or other. We do need to find the right balances.

Humanity seems to be a strange abnormality on the planet. We use everything we lay our hands on, whether needed or not. When we find we do not really want it or need it, we simply discard it by throwing it anywhere convenient. A grass verge around a road will do fine, some of us think. Or flush our used cooking oil down the toilet, easy, out of sight out of mind. So, perhaps this Covid-19 is teaching us one thing, that everything that lives is important. Also that we do not have to live on a never ending roller-coaster. We do not really need to get drunk on a Spanish beach, there are plenty of beaches in the UK. It really is time to re-think how we want our civilisation to be. More, how we want to be on this planet. So hopefully we might in the end avoid making a planet of deserts, swirled around by seas that are poisonous for every living thing and devoid of fish. It is our choice, so let’s make the right one!