Letters | Coronavirus warns the world to forget about easy money and force a climate crisis reckoning
- The coronavirus pandemic is a symptom of ethical failure exacerbated by the greed for easy money. Wealth inequality and climate change require our urgent attention and work as a community to realign priorities
We are the richest we have ever been in history, however, the picture-perfect illusion crumbles in the presence of long-standing social issues.
We live in an age of globalisation, which Pope Francis has accurately emphasised as a “globalisation of indifference”. We live our lives mirroring the algorithms finely tuned to our preference on social media. Any content we don’t like is blocked while positive feedback is generated at the sweep of a thumb. In the same way, we turn away from social issues that don’t immediately or directly impact our lives. Until we can’t.
Water doesn’t suddenly turn into ice. The coronavirus pandemic is a symptom of ethical failure exacerbated by the greed for easy money. Mass-scale breeding of animals in cramped quarters provides an optimum environment for the mutation and emergence of new diseases. Furthermore, the ignorance of the rest of the world in thinking they are untouchable and the logic of individualism caused cases to explode.
Let this be a lesson to the world: just when you thought you were untouchable by the pandemic, it jumps you. You may be untouched now, but land and sea are not much of a deterrent in an age of globalisation. Ethics becomes crucial in these times. It is ever more imperative to shrug off the homo economicus attitude and work as a community to realign priorities.