OPINION: COVID-19, the Economy, and Biodiversity
Written by Jim Rettig
As I write this, the evening news tells us today that over 165,000 new cases of COVID-19 were identified in the United Stated in the last 24 hours. The pandemic numbers are far worse today than they were in March, almost nine months ago. Since March, much has been written about the origin of COVID-19 and why this all happened. Some blame China. Some blame bats or other exotic animals. But John Vidal notes that “a number of researchers today think that it is actually humanity’s destruction of biodiversity that creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases like COVID-19 . . . Is it possible, then,” he asks, “that it was human activity, such as road building, mining, hunting, and logging, that triggered the Ebola epidemics in the 1990s and that is unleashing new terrors today?”
David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, stated earlier this year: “We invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes, which harbor so many species of animals and plants — and within those creatures, so many unknown viruses.” He continues: “We cut the trees; we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets. We disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it.”
“In fact,” writes Vidal, “Kate Jones, Chair of Ecology and Biodiversity at University College London, calls emerging animal-borne infectious diseases an “increasing and very significant threat to global health, security, and economies.” She and a team of researchers have “identified 335 diseases that emerged between 1960 and 2004, at least 60% of which came from non-human animals.”
All of this is happening because our western, capitalist economic model is built on growth and the exploitation of any and all resources that can produce wealth. This model drives our economy deeper and deeper into pristine habitats through logging, mining, road building, all of which is exasperated by an increasing human population and rapid urbanization.
“The resulting transmission of disease from wildlife to humans,” notes Jones, “is now a hidden cost of human economic development.”
All of which is to say that our current economic model is unsustainable. We are disrupting the natural ecosystems on which our very lives depend. This economic model has been called an anti-economy by Wendell Berry, who wrote an article challenging us to invert this economic order. Berry is a writer, a part-time philosopher, and a farmer living in Kentucky. He published an article in the September 2009 issue of The Progressive Magazine (pages 17-25) entitled “Inverting the Economic Order.”
In the article Berry argues that we live in an anti-economy, “a financial system without a sound economic basis and without economic virtues.” Berry makes the case for a sound and sustainable economy that puts the caring of the natural world first. This would be followed by a concern for human beings and their culture: local memory, honesty, thrift, good work, and more. The third level of the economy would be the economy of markets in which things are manufactured or produced to enhance human life. The fourth (and bottom) level of this economic model would be the financial system that supports and is subservient to the other three. The economies of the western world have inverted this order and put the financial economy first and care for the natural world last.
The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates the truth of what Berry says. We need to do a better job of caring for Earth and to be very intentional about it. This is why entomologist E.O. Wilson calls for human beings to put away one half of the Earth, to save for all the other species in order to enhance the future of biodiversity. A healthy natural world helps produce a healthy economy. Do what you can to invert our economy into a sustainable one. Become informed, act for a healthy future, and save biodiversity.
The quotes from John Vidal above come from an article in the June 2020 issue of the magazine Population Connection, pages 10-15. The quotes from David Quammen and Kate Jones come from the article by Vidal. Population Connection is the national grassroots population organization that educates young people and advocates progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by earth’s resources. If you are interested in getting a copy of the aforementioned issue of Population Connection or of Berry’s article, send me an email before January 1 at jrettigtanager@gmail.com and I’ll see if I can get you one.
Photo credit by Andrew Paterson.