After the pandemic, will we return to business as usual? – Open Democracy

But to change the paradigm, to reset the system, we would have to give up too many things. Even if now, physically and psychologically damaged by the effects of the pandemic, we declare that we are willing to do so, as soon as normality returns our beloved capitalism of consumption, leisure, and perpetual mobility will return. And so will inequality. And then, anxious to "reincorporate", to "reopen", we will have forgotten our promises and vows, made in a moment of weakness when we were forced to reflect, because we were afraid of dying.

Changing the paradigm would mean, among other things, stopping the growth rate, so destructive for the climate and the biosphere, and entering a degrowth process, as many sociologists and economists already claim. This would mean changing the industrial model and minimizing the consumption of the unnecessary, of the dispensable, and ending the abuses of the financial economy, starting with tax havens. And at the same time, it would mean ending the tremendous inequalities, not only raising the standard of those who have nothing, but significantly reducing the standard of those who have a lot.

Since the evidence of the catastrophic scale of climate change has become undeniable, some timid model transition programmes have been launched, with the intention of progressively abandoning greenhouse gas emissions and moving towards non-resource-based growth, such as the European Green Deal.

But up until the beginning of March, billions of vehicles with combustion engines were still on the road. Tens of thousands of planes were still flying around the planet. In 2019, 90.3 million new cars were sold worldwide, even though it was 4% less than in 2018, at 94.4 million. On the morning of November 20, 2019, for example, there were 11,500 planes flying simultaneously around the world. What is the point of having an average of 154 daily flights between Sydney and Melbourne, according to 2017 data? And what is the logic behind the fact that 83.7 million tourists arrived in Spain in 2019, more than 80% of them on board aircraft? Aren't the 65.7 million tourists who visited New York in 2018 far too many? And what about the dozens of new airports, the countless kilometres of motorways, the billions of animals slaughtered, the endless hectares of forest deforested?

Although these figures should cause vertigo, they are generally assumed to be "normal", and it is to this "normality" that we aspire to return, the sooner the better.

Because: who, among the rich and the middle classes, is going to suddenly give up flying in airplanes, their second homes, their swimming pools, their cruise ships? And who, among the underprivileged, is going to stop dreaming of achieving one day, for himself or for his family, some of these privileges that the system promises, even though it almost never fulfils them?

Our system is full of contradictions, but Schumpeter has already said that the nature of capitalism is its creative destruction. Perhaps many will have taken advantage of the quarantine to ask themselves profound questions, although I don't think that the Covid-19 is strong enough to be a true game changer. More than one person will have to make a proposal for amendments, and I hope that this will have some influence on their future political behaviour. For example, in our democracies, where we will see whether those who are seriously committed to a change of model will win, or the nationalists and populists who are committed to deepening what we have, trusting in God and borders, will eventualluy win, and that they really do not care about the others .

What is almost certain is that, as soon as it leaves us, as many of us as possible will go back to normal, back to the beach. After all, we are members of an orchestra that will continue to play while the ship is sinking. But after the coronavirus catastrophe, one can honestly ask: will the new normality be business as usual or an opportunity to start changing, seriously, the paradigm of our civilization?

Read the original here:

After the pandemic, will we return to business as usual? - Open Democracy