HOW MUCH WILL COVID-19 CHANGE OUR WORLD?
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Articles are popping up everywhere with speculations about how Covid-19 might change our world, and you can expect a flood of fictional treatments along the same lines in the months to come. Because we all have the sense that the world has changed—it will never be quite the same even once this pandemic has finally died out. Will the change be large scale? Maybe even the collapse of our civilization?
That’s a bit extreme, but many countries will be facing record-high deficits and badly-hobbled economies, so a return to the status quo is not a sure thing. And history has shown that pandemics do have the power to trigger such big changes.
An early pandemic is thought to have spread from Spartans to Athenians during their 5th century BC war and helped give Sparta the victory.
When the bubonic plague appeared in the 6th century CE, now known as the Justinian Plague, it not only killed between 30 – 50 million people—nearly half of the world’s population at the time—but it ended Emperor Justinian’s attempts to revitalize the Roman Empire. Trade faltered, sources of wealth dried up, and the empire became vulnerable to both internal rebellion and external invasion. The so-called “dark ages” soon followed.
And when Spanish explorers brought smallpox to the New World, the Aztec Empire was wiped out.
On the other hand, it could be said that some long-term good came out of such suffering at times. It’s been suggested that the horrors of the Black Death in the 1300’s (bubonic plague again) actually raised standards of living and brought about the end of the feudal system in places like Britain because the reduced population meant more work for the survivors. It may also have halted Viking incursions into North America. There have been numerous cases of disease-driven hardship triggering rebellions that changed the social order, leading to independence from colonizing powers, for example.
It’s interesting to note, too, that the fall of some ancient civilizations were hastened by climate disasters; the Minoan culture in the Mediterranean was rocked by the explosion of the Thera volcano around 1600 BC, and a number of Bronze Age cultures in that same region were laid low by a suddenly cooler climate after the 1100 BC eruption of the Hekla volcano in Iceland. Droughts and cooling weather are thought to have contributed to quite a few collapses.
And here we are, in the early stages of a climate crisis, also facing a global pandemic with the certain knowledge that it won’t be the last.
But it’s worth taking a look at what’s considered to be the most comprehensive look at the rise and fall of human civilizations, historian Arnold Toynbee’s massive A Study Of History. Having analysed 28 civilisations, Toynbee saw strong patterns, one of the most crucial being the gradual failure of the creative minority that leads and drives a society. Such leaders become complacent, resting too much on their laurels rather than continuing to reinvigorate their societies. The rest of the population—the proletariat—become increasingly dissatisfied. Social upheaval begins from within, and outside pressures increase as the central authority weakens. The change that follows can take many forms, but it is inexorable. Environmental factors like disease and climate can hasten and shape the change, but the impetus for it comes from the civilisations’ own internal vulnerabilities. Some historians believe that social inequality is a powerful contributing factor too, and that societies can collapse under the weight of their own bureaucracies.
Does that sound like what we’re seeing in a world where wealth is increasingly hoarded by the one percent?
Just a thought.
Science fiction writers insist that our job isn’t to predict the exact details of the future, but to point out the many different futures that might happen, so the world can clearly see the ones it doesn’t want. So what are some of the long-term implications of this Covid-19 crisis?
We’ve discovered that a surprising percentage of office work really can be done from home with current and emerging technology. If the trend persists, the demand for commercial real estate could plummet, easing overcrowded business centres of cities (allowing them to be re-purposed or even re-greened), and shrinking concrete production (a huge polluter and consumer of energy). It could mean momentous reductions in commuter traffic too. With the price of oil already hitting unthinkable lows, a continued loss of demand might be the final straw that breaks the Big Oil camel’s back—the beginning of the end of our society’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Compounding that impact will be a significant shrinkage in the airline industry—it might be a long time before people again feel comfortable packed into pressurized tubes with hundreds of others for hours at a time, and navigating airports among travellers from all over the world.
Covid-19 has also taught us the dangers of relying on global commerce for essentials like personal protective equipment, medicines, and even food. We’ve allowed vast amounts of production to be moved to certain countries because of cheaper labour, only to be caught with our pants down when a crisis hits. Then we’re stunned to find that the things we urgently need are in short supply. If we learn that lesson (and we should!), more products will once again be produced close to where they’re consumed. This could have a real impact on global shipping and trucking, two more of the most egregious carbon emitters.
The above trends taken together could result in the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions we desperately need to head off the worst of climate change. A surprising benefit of a horrible event.
Another big change could be in the wind: When a financial recession hits, governments often try to spend their way back out of it, but they really count on consumers regaining enough confidence to go out and buy lots of goods. That’s the medicine that cures a sick economy. Well, in the past couple of months enormous numbers of people have been thrown out of work, at least temporarily. National and regional governments have had to step in with a whole spectrum of financial supports. Some countries will be judged to have done a better job of that than others, and if, after Covid-19 passes, the economies of those countries also perform a more successful rebound, it will be powerful evidence in support of a guaranteed minimum income or universal basic income for citizens. In some places, that idea is considered unthinkably socialist. In other places, it’s already being done. But if Covid-19 shows that citizens kept from bankruptcy by government support programs can quickly regain their confidence and spend their way back to communal economic health, that will be a persuasive argument for ongoing measures to reduce financial hardship and poverty.
All in all, I certainly don’t expect our current civilization to collapse, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see significant shifts in political power around the world, especially when some countries like the U.S have been let down so badly by their leadership.
And while these are some of the biggest changes we might see, there will also be hundreds of others, especially involving more spending on preventative medical research and treatment measures. Increased reliance on social networking, the internet, and nearly every aspect of communications technology. Remote education. Food delivery. Shopping online from local retailers. Just observe the creative ways people have coped with the lockdowns, and think about how many of those solutions will catch on and stick around.
It will give you something to do while you’re stuck at home!
A Sampling of Additional Reading
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190218-are-we-on-the-road-to-civilisation-collapse
https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/study-history Arnold Toynbee
https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/pandemics-timeline https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-pandemics-change-history
And an interesting panel discussion on the subject that includes science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaLphVBg9ew&feature=share
