Recently, the ABC (Australia Broadcasting Corporation) News website presented an advertorial article promoting a David Attenborough documentary called The Year Earth Changed, which expounds the positive effect the global slowdown of human economic activity due to the pandemic has had on the natural world. 

If this documentary only references the short-term advantages that the natural world gains from the pandemic, and doesn’t reference the long-term negative effects, then it is misleading, as the long term disadvantages will be much more important than any short- term advantages.  

The environmental advantages that I expect this documentary to discuss will indirectly result from the reduction in our economic activity, because it is mostly our economic activity that causes us to destroy natural environments and wildlife, and create pollution, especially greenhouse gases, and waste.  While the pandemic has indeed slowed global economic activity for the moment, the longer-term effect will be the opposite.

The reason that there will be an increase in economic activity is that world governments have created a huge amount of debt to see us through this pandemic, debt that must be paid back to the already rich people who it has been borrowed from.  The repayment of this debt will require a vast increase in global economic activity, which will result in an equally vast increase in the extraction of resources, the destruction of wild places, and the creation of pollution including greenhouse gasses, and waste.

The ABC News article states "We can use what we learn to re-evaluate and modify our habits, they (the documentary producers) argue, instead of mindlessly returning to how things once were in a pre-pandemic world.”  This is true; but are we likely to re-evaluate and modify our habits?  The Australian government is showing no signs of doing so, preferring to promote a “gas-led recovery”; that is, burning lots of fossil fuel to maximise economic activity to pay back the all the new debt.  This is clearly “mindlessly returning to how things once were in a pre-pandemic” – no lesson learned here.  While other countries are not so openly espousing a huge expansion of fossil fuel use, they will still need to greatly increase their level of economic activity to repay the debt, and our economic activity always has direct or indirect negative consequences. 

What this documentary is likely to usefully expound is that we have not yet driven the natural word to a place of no return, and this is an important point.  If we were able to take control of our economic activity and reduce it to a sustainable level (and if we can bring the climate under control), then the natural world has shown that is capable of stabilising and recovering, and continuing to be able to provide us with the things we need to live on Earth.  However, this will require us to find another way to eradicate all the debt that we have accumulated, especially the debt accumulated during the pandemic.  We will also have to fundamentally change the way the global economy works so that it doesn’t have to grow, which will involve changing the way we create money. 

You can find related posts here:

economic growth, government debt, environmental degradation

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