We’re Missing the Chance to Change for the Better
A lot of people like to joke to geography students like me that we spent three years and £27,000 on a degree in colouring in maps. This is not the case. They made software that does it automatically years ago and the field has been in crisis ever since. One way schools have been trying to pull geography students’ employability back from the brink is through engaging us with critical theories about how both the world works.
I encountered a lot of these during my undergraduate studies, but the one that stuck with me the most is the concept of the adaptive cycle, which is part of a wider school of thought that believes that both nature and society operate almost identically.
The most common example of an adaptive cycle is a forest. They generally start as barren plots of land, which pioneer plants colonise and compete to survive. This competition leads to the development of a mature forest ruled by trees, which have outfought the other plants to achieve dominance. Yet in achieving it, the forest as a system becomes less resilient to change. So when a fire sweeps through and the trees are all destroyed it’s left as a barren plot of land once again, starting the cycle anew. This is the key to the adaptive cycle. What starts as a competitive environment becomes settled and less resilient to change. When this state is destroyed, the cycle repeats.
It’s not hard to place this model in the real world. Countries and economies do the same thing. One industry will rise and monopolise the competition and then fall to a stock market crash. An empire will rise from a small town and then get swept away by disease and infighting. Rise and fall is a part of life.
With every one of these rotations, the fall before the next rise, there is a chance to change for the better. Species that survive a forest fire can adapt to cope in future. Businesses can analyse why their competitors crashed and make changes for the better. Countries can learn why empires across history fell and how to prevent it from happening to them.
Bearing this in mind, there’s no question that we need to do this today. COVID caused one of the biggest socio-economic shifts in years and thus presented us with an opportunity. If we’re currently on the falling limb of the cycle, how can we change for the better in the future?
This is something a lot of important groups must be thinking as well. Yet, if you take a closer look at some of the issues that COVID has brought to our attention, it’s clear that they’re missing the opportunity to build a better world. If anything, they’re trying to get back to where we were before.
Tackling Misinformation
If you’ve followed any recent election, you’ll know that misinformation is one of the biggest problems in the world right now. Even the WHO, who are busy tackling COVID, maintain that the ‘infodemic’ is just as significant a plague as coronavirus.
The pandemic made this issue incredibly clear, especially in the UK. It started with theories circulating online that 5G masts were behind coronavirus. Not enough was done to fight this at the time and this led to numerous issues, including masts being set on fire, technicians being abused in the street, and even a huge protest in Central London led by the original farfetched conspiracy theorist David Icke. Moreover, these groups also command significant financial power and have crowdfunded a legal campaign to sue the government over 5G.
Whilst some steps are being taken to combat misinformation and the issues it creates, including the government launching a 5G information guide and Twitter adding context to its trending page, these are arguably are too small, especially considering that the groups suing parliament likely won’t believe the government published guide anyway.
This can also be said of the steps being taken by Facebook to combat US election misinformation, who won’t be accepting new political ads during the final days of the campaign. On the face of it, this seems positive, considering how big a boost can be gained in these days. But this final stretch likely won’t matter as much if most Americans have already voted by mail by then, as the article points out.
There’s much more to be done. Sadly, I don’t believe this is going to happen anytime soon, especially considering that leaders such as President Trump thrive on misinformation as their main source of political clout.
Binning Brexit
Just as soon as that UK has dealt with the first punch from COVID (although considering a second wave is imminent it’s clear we haven’t dealt with it at all), we’ll have to deal with another fierce blow from Brexit. A scandal that is so significant it took a global pandemic just to cover it up.
The issue has recently come back into focus in the UK, considering that we’re now dangerously close to the withdrawal deadline. This is also apparently the perfect time to try and change the agreement and break international law in doing so.
Whilst the government may think this to be a grand idea, their most senior lawyer certainly didn’t, and quit over the decision. In doing so, he’s joined an ever-growing band of civil servant exiles who have also resigned throughout Brexit, uneasy about its implications.
If this doesn’t concern you, maybe the fact that Britain has spent a ridiculous amount of money on Brexit during a pandemic will tip the scales. For instance, the ‘Festival of Brexit’ planned for after we’ve left the EU will supposedly cost around a third of the £350 million famously promised for the NHS. A full £350m is also being spent on helping businesses get through the red-tape directly caused by Brexit. Given that many believe that most UK businesses will also likely see their operating costs go up after we leave, it seems that trying to force Brexit through right now will only make pandemic recovery more difficult.
It’s emblematic of the sunk cost fallacy. The UK has invested far too much in Brexit so they have to see it through no matter what. But given how vulnerable we are right now it makes sense not to add further political complications to the post-COVID world and rethink Brexit.
Yet, the government will almost certainly drag the country kicking and screaming to ‘independence’ for the sake of its right-wing voters, intentionally avoiding a last-ditch opportunity to prevent a generational mistake.
A Real Green Recovery
And yet, even after COVID and Brexit are done, we still have the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced right around the corner. Climate change. Despite a significant amount of people believing that we shouldn’t be as concerned for our existence as many of us are when talking about climate change, the more you analyse it the clearer the threat becomes.
For instance, it was recently reported that extreme coastal flooding could cost the UK £12 billion per year by 2050 if nothing is done to address sea-level rise, threatening many important coastal communities. Indeed, a lack of water could also be just as costly, as if rainfall becomes more sporadic it’s predicted that much of South of the UK could become severely water-stressed by the same year, having major impacts on both agriculture and health.
Furthermore, more extreme conditions will also have an impact on nature, whose services to the economy were valued at £761 billion in 2015, if the current predictions are anything to go by. Considering that the most recent WWF Living Planet Report found that the population sizes of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles have fallen by 68% since 1970, it may not be farfetched to suggest that we’ll lose a lot of these services if we don’t act now. This argument doesn’t even begin to consider the moral imperative of saving species that have just as much a right to thrive on this planet as we do whilst ensuring they are unimpeded by human greed.
Indeed, if we lose these services, we’ll have to pay to replace them. Add the costs of dealing with record-breaking disasters and other climate impacts and you’ll soon reach a situation where they’ll be insurmountable, and the economy will steadily decline.
It makes sense then to invest now in saving the future, considering that COVID provided a brief glimpse into how emissions can fall when we shift economic activity. The question then must be how much do we invest?
Luckily, this sum has already been worked out. If we want to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 the UK will need to spend 1–2% of its GDP annually, which was between £20–40 billion when this figure was calculated in 2015.
However, the amount the current government have only committed £3 billion to a green recovery, whilst also actively investing in fossil fuels by recently granting licenses to 65 companies to survey for oil and gas in UK waters. £3 billion certainly looks like a lot, but it’s far less than what’s needed, and it’s undeniable that further investment in fossil fuels is not in the best interest of the planet in the long term.
Such inaction is truly disheartening, considering how COVID has shown just how fragile our society is. If a pandemic can do all of this damage, just imagine how much disruption a record-breaking storm or drought might do in a few years. We do stand a chance of creating a better world for the next generation, but we need to take this chance now.
Are We Building Back Better?
The phrase Building Back Better has become somewhat of a mantra for various groups trying to encourage economic and social recovery. Businesses and Governments seem to be desperate to embody this in everything they do.
Yet, just by examining this small selection of issues, it is obvious that many actors are not truly invested in it. Instead, they’re much more concerned with just Building Back to the same position they were pre-COVID, all the while offering inconsequential commitments barely addressing the biggest challenges of the day.
Honestly, this should not stand. We might not get an opportunity to change like this ever again, and the next fall of the cycle we come across might be far too late to do anything meaningful. We need to change now, but we are thoroughly missing the target.
