Mark Robinowitz

Eugene, Oregon

Three months before 9/11 the feds did a wargame called Dark Winter that 
anticipated a pandemic, although with smallpox (much worse than 
coronavirus).  Their scenario modeling predicted the country would fall 
apart quickly.  It was part of the motive for creating "Homeland."

Coronavirus has had more impact on energy use and carbon pollution than 
climate activism.  In 2008, David Holmgren, co-originator of 
permaculture, said recession did more to lower emissions than anything 
else.  www.futurescenarios.org

The best case coronavirus pandemic scenario is not just keeping the 
piles of corpses as small as possible, but that the aftermath will 
stimulate a societal immune response for real resilience, sincere 
sustainabillity, compassionate civilization.

The pandemic is a global exercise highlighting the wonderful and the 
hideous: international scientific cooperation and petty politics, 
asperations of resilience and lack thereof, homelessness, prisons, 
mega-slums, refugees.  We seem to have hit Peak Airplanes.  Possibly 
Peak Food and Peak Population, too.

We are entering a profound break in the global economy. Coronavirus is a 
catalyst, a time out to consider the downslope ahead of climate, peak, 
overconsumption, overpopulation, overshoot. It is a pause to consider 
where we are going as a civilization and species, to act as if we plan 
to stay part of the Earth.

We need to "flatten the curve" to the limits to endless growth on a 
round, abundant, finite planet.

In 2008, David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture, said recession 
did more to lower greenhouse gas emissions than anything else. 
 www.futurescenarios.org

The coronavirus economic crash reduced energy consumption faster than 
any other event.

It would be nice to use the remaining finite concentrated fossil carbon 
to make solar panels and wind farms, to relocalize food production, 
improve rail transport. Solar power is great - I've used it for three 
decades - but living on our solar budget cannot replace using millions 
of years of accumulated fossil fuels.

Modern medicine, computer manufacturing, long distance trucking, 
aviation, steel, concrete, asphalt, cargo ships all require fossil 
fuels.

Einstein said the splitting of the atom changed everything except the 
way we live and thus we drift toward catastrophe.  What we are all about 
to go through challenges the entire paradigm of industrial civilization.

Our way of life - consumption levels, overpopulation, compound interest 
for money - is based on exponential growth (like a virus). Moving back 
toward balance would resemble the networks of mycelium (mushrooms are 
their fruiting bodies). Mycelia are networks, not hierarchies. They 
enable plants to share nutrients. Some species make medicinal mushrooms.

In the 1970s the global campaign to eradicate smallpox in the wild 
involved about a quarter million people for less than the cost of a B-1 
bomber.  This would be a better model to base crash programs to mitigate 
the pandemic than the Manhattan Project (which built the first nuclear 
weapons and nuked our democracy).

Health care, not warfare.

Our society - not only in the United States - delays action on most 
threats until the body counts pile up. This is true for warnings about 
the Boeing 737 MAX, the DC-10, countless toxic chemicals, the New 
Orleans levees and now, ignoring the spread of coronavirus until it 
engulfed much of the world.

It's not the end of the world but it could be the end of complacency.