As I write this, almost every single country on this planet is dealing with some sort of “environmental” disaster. Floods and wildfires, both “fueled” by weather patterns pushed to the extreme by, let’s just get this out of the way, human made climate change. The extremes of 2021 may be a very seldom outlier on the historic scales of humankind, but if you have read the IPCC report carefully, we can almost guarantee it won’t be an outlier for very long and the extremes of this year will feel muted to us in the not so far distant future.
Well, let’s talk about something different, something more fun, shall we?
The corona virus is a global pandemic that has caused, so far, around 4 million deaths (that we know of) globally. It has disrupted our lives in a way only very few events can, and I would go as far to say that it probably has affected more humans (absolutely) than any other previous event. Okay, that’s easy. In 1918, we had probably around 1,6 Billion people - We’re now close to 8 Billion.
So, what do these events, apart from the horror and pain they stack on top of each other, have in common?