{"id":50375,"date":"2021-06-03T10:42:10","date_gmt":"2021-06-03T09:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=50375"},"modified":"2021-06-03T10:42:10","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T09:42:10","slug":"covid-is-a-prelude-to-the-climate-catastrophe-and-we-are-not-learning-fast-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/06\/03\/covid-is-a-prelude-to-the-climate-catastrophe-and-we-are-not-learning-fast-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid is a prelude to the climate catastrophe and we are not learning fast enough"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Covid-19 should have taught us <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/wellcome.org\/news\/what-can-we-learn-covid-19-address-climate-crisis\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">lessons<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for the unfolding climate crisis. But sadly, thousands of avoidable UK covid-19 deaths have not been sufficient. In particular, we have not learnt that excessive profits too often <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lanres\/article\/PIIS2213-2600(14)70211-5\/fulltext\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">damage<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> public health. It is wrong to profit from other people\u2019s pain. The profit motive is embedded in both the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC7543589\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">pandemic<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and the c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.clientearth.org\/latest\/latest-updates\/stories\/fossil-fuels-and-climate-change-the-facts\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">limate <\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">emergency. Society needs to learn fast and doctors need to teach. Profit attracts <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2021\/apr\/19\/a-great-deception-oil-giants-taken-to-task-over-greenwash-ads?utm_term=374a3a44583c2124c1c1657850cdd550&amp;utm_campaign=GreenLight&amp;utm_source=esp&amp;utm_medium=Email&amp;CMP=greenlight_email\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">deceit<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and negligence: over 100,000 people have died from covid-19 in the UK, yet we still fail to isolate or quarantine <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/372\/bmj.n608\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">effectively<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Instead, we prioritise profit through privatised <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www2.deloitte.com\/uk\/en\/pages\/annual-report-2020\/home.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">tracing<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and unevaluated <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/01\/12\/covid-19-government-must-urgently-rethink-lateral-flow-test-roll-out\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">mass testing<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. As lockdown lifts, our eggs are all in the vaccine basket: we feel protected, but remain vulnerable to supply, uptake, and variants. We have failed to learn that private profit consistently undermines public health. Pandemics demand selfless local, national, and worldwide <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/03\/17\/covid-19-a-call-for-global-vaccine-equity\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">cooperation<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But the climate crisis will demand vastly more selflessness which is <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2021\/apr\/19\/a-great-deception-oil-giants-taken-to-task-over-greenwash-ads?utm_term=374a3a44583c2124c1c1657850cdd550&amp;utm_campaign=GreenLight&amp;utm_source=esp&amp;utm_medium=Email&amp;CMP=greenlight_email\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">anathema to commerce<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. It appears we must expect bigger losses before we choose to cooperate rather than to compete.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have not learnt to regulate profit because we are, in Charles Dickens\u2019 words, &#8220;a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/quotes\/7167424-there-never-were-greed-and-cunning-in-the-world-yet\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">cunning and greedy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> society&#8221;, always overreaching ourselves. Covid is a mock exam before our unfolding, disastrous, self-induced climate and ecological crisis. But despite hundreds of thousands of deaths, we remain arrogantly confident that vaccines will trump viruses and that technology will sort the climate emergency. We are inviting a bigger death toll, possibly millions in the UK and billions worldwide, before we see the folly of our hubris. Much of our perceived cleverness is actually raw cunning and much of our jealously guarded, consumerist comfort is greed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our cunning is everywhere. We develop tests and wonderful vaccines, but then waste our achievements with inadequate support for <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/56201754\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">poorer countries<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Our government gleefully places scientific blessings at the whim of profit-led organisations. Serco and Deloitte\u2019s test and trace squanders money because we<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/372\/bmj.n608\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> fail to support those detected to isolate<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. We are vaccinating our population before poorer countries, but re-infection and variants from across the world may well undo our haste. We have a government that is happy to lie, tell half-truths, and make promises while enacting diametrically <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-politics-56807520\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">opposite policies<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Our government systematically confuses us, misrepresents fact, and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/371\/bmj.m4425\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">abuses science<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Our prime minister plays the fool to disguise his cynical commitment to profit-for-the-few. We hear that \u201calmost no-one tells the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2021\/apr\/21\/ex-minister-johnny-mercer-says-almost-nobody-tells-truth-in-johnsons-government\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">truth<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201d in a \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2021\/apr\/24\/boris-johnson-a-vacuum-of-integrity-dominic-grieve-joins-downing-street-row\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">vacuum of integrity<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201d. Covid-19 and the climate crisis both thrive on deceit. The government sets bold, distant carbon emission targets while subsidising oil companies, roadbuilding, and <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/uk\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">abolishing green grants<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Green-washing the future, while increasing emissions today, is suicidal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">And greed is everywhere too. The pharmaceutical industry is predicated on profit and often fails to address public need. Optimism around covid vaccines hides a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.prospectmagazine.co.uk\/politics\/big-pharma-covid-19-vaccine-uk-revenue-stephen-buranyi\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">backstory<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Public money, poured by governments into private corporations, enables private <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2021\/mar\/06\/from-pfizer-to-moderna-whos-making-billions-from-covid-vaccines\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">fortunes<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Companies have failed to share their intellectual property and vaccine manufacturing facilities lie underemployed all over the world. We could vaccinate the world quickly, but will not do it because of the greed of those who control pharmaceutical manufacture. Governments repeatedly collude with industry. Big tobacco creates addicts from children then profits from <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/news-room\/fact-sheets\/detail\/tobacco\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">8 million<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> cruel deaths worldwide, every year. Profit drives obesity and air pollution. Greed is pervasive, ugly, and ubiquitous. It feeds covid-19 and fuels the climate crisis. Governments and media depend on cynical commercial interests. Doctors have failed to expose profit where it exacerbates disease. Do we need millions more deaths from covid, and then the climate crisis, before we tame commerce into serving the public good?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Governments, the media and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/may\/12\/test-trace-workers-government-outsourcing?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">health<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are dominated by commercial interests <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/may\/06\/difference-real-climate-policy-greenwashing-emissions?fbclid=IwAR1PmzfX6FQcUNDX9KPhYir4U9icl_ZT3miekvVBrGdb_YIOzWVnzReD2bo\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">pretending to care<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> while profiting from pain and pollution. Our government talks of the \u201cpeoples\u2019 priorities\u201d while looking to the pockets of the rich. Doctors have a duty to see and explain this duplicity to the public. We must choose between truth and comfort, we <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/quotes\/897467-god-offers-to-every-mind-a-choice-between-repose-and\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">cannot<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> have both. We, or our children, will pay in full. Our obsession with profit has inflated the costs of covid, but this is nothing compared to it\u2019s fuelling of climate chaos. Irreversible climate change has already occurred, whole societies and ecosystems are dying, and emissions <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2021\/apr\/20\/carbon-emissions-to-soar-in-2021-by-second-highest-rate-in-history\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">continue to rise<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Doctors must now condemn the dominance of cynical, deceitful profit if we are to avoid the worst health impacts of climate-induced societal collapse and mass migration.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We are at a moral and intellectual crossroads. Doctors need to call out unregulated, opaque, corporate control of government and media. Commercially controlled vaccines will protect the rich for a while but, if we do not share them equitably across the world, they will not end the pandemic. Profit-fuelled climate chaos remains a terrifying threat. Doctors must learn to expose those who profit while damaging public health.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><strong>Bing Jones<\/strong>, former associate specialist in haematology, Sheffield.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Competing interests<\/strong>: none declared.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Covid-19 should have taught us lessons for the unfolding climate crisis. But sadly, thousands of avoidable UK covid-19 deaths have not been sufficient. In particular, we have not learnt that [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/06\/03\/covid-is-a-prelude-to-the-climate-catastrophe-and-we-are-not-learning-fast-enough\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":50150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-change"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Covid is a prelude to the climate catastrophe and we are not learning fast enough - The BMJ<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/06\/03\/covid-is-a-prelude-to-the-climate-catastrophe-and-we-are-not-learning-fast-enough\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Covid is a prelude to the climate catastrophe and we are not learning fast enough - The BMJ\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Covid-19 should have taught us lessons for the unfolding climate crisis. 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