Life in the time of the virus

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Many things should change, but when COVID-19 is a memory of a distant nightmare I wonder will we just go back to where we were.

I think of our civilisation as in an adolescent phase of development. Many aspects that show tremendous promise, but also many paths to self-destruction with no clear signs we will avoid them. We're only a couple of hundred years old, a blink of an eye in the timescale of life on Earth.

I love flying, I still think of getting on a big plane as something exciting, not at all routine.

But if we let the air transport industry continue with unfettered expansion, it will soon become one of our biggest carbon emitters.

We should find a way, globally, to restrict fossil-fuelled aircraft to necessary travel - journeys that must happen and are not practical any other way, maybe one long-haul trip a year per rich Westerner. That will have a negative impact on some people I admire. If we don't, future generations will face problems much worse than COVID--19.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/302992

The doubling time for the virus is just a few days, doubling time for CO2 in the atmosphere maybe 40-60 years, but it only takes a few tens of percent increase in CO2 to put us in the danger zone, make formerly habitable countries uninhabitable, unfit for human life.

We need to learn some lessons from this virus. Our civilisation needs to grow up, or perish.

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