Bruno Latour: The pandemic is a warning: we must take care of the earth, our only home
The climate crisis resembles a huge planetary lockdown, trapping humanity within an ever-deteriorating environment. There is a moment when a never-ending crisis turns into a way of life. This seems to be the case with the pandemic. If so, it’s wise to explore the permanent condition in which it has left us. One obvious lesson is that societies have to learn once again to live with pathogens, just as they learned to when microbes were first made visible by the discoveries of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch.
These discoveries were
concerned with only one aspect of microbial life. When you also consider the
various sciences of the earth system, another aspect of viruses and bacteria
comes to the fore. During the long geochemical history of the earth, microbes,
together with fungi and plants, have been essential, and are still essential,
to the very composition of the environment in which we humans live. The
pandemic has shown us that we will never escape the invasive presence of these
living beings, entangled as we are with them. They react to our actions; if
they mutate, we have to mutate as well.
This is why the many
national lockdowns, imposed on citizens to help them survive the virus, are a
powerful analogy for the situation in which humanity finds itself detained for
good….
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Chomsky: Internationalism or Extinction
Earthly
Anecdotes: an alternative to the doom-saying of our times
Reynard Loki - Here’s a major lesson from
the pandemic: We can save the planet from climate change
