Thread by @SteB777

1/10 The impacts of COVID-19 will be profound. Not just the direct impacts of the disease, which will be tragic. But on our whole system, our societies and economies. Important lessons which need to be learned re: the climate and ecological crisis.
theguardian.com/world/2020/apr…

2/10 Our modern growth orientated economy makes it very unstable and vulnerable to shocks. Any slight impact on growth sends seismic waves through our system. Most economists seem to profoundly misunderstand how vulnerable our current system is to these shocks.

3/10 Whilst the impacts of COVID-19 will be tragic, they could have been much worse. This is how vulnerable our system is. This need for constant high growth led to our leadership taking desperate gambles with public safety to keep the growth model economy going.

4/10 This gamble has created far bigger economic impacts than if the precautionary principle had been followed, which would have limited the spread of this pandemic. This highlights the much bigger gamble our leadership is taking over the far more serious climate crisis.

5/10 Our leadership has repeatedly delayed taking action to address the climate and ecological crisis for fear of how it could limit economic growth. However, the longer this delay, the more radical this action will need to be to avert disaster, with much bigger economic impacts.

6/10 I've been saying "COVID-19 is the climate and ecological crisis in a grain of sand", because it exactly mirrors the mistaken thinking we see as regards the far more serious climate crisis, where we're storing up massive problems for ourselves by delaying action.

7/10 Both the longer term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the climate and ecological crisis could be averted by shifting our economic model to one based on cooperation and meeting the needs of people, rather than a pure focus on profit and growth through competition.

8/10 Undoubtedly our leadership will desperately try to re-start the growth economy after the COVID-19 pandemic. But this could be a big mistake, creating a downward spiral, and not the recovery they aim for.

9/10 Governments are pumping huge amounts of money into propping up businesses, the fossil fuel industry, airlines etc, many of which need to be wound down anyway to address the climate crisis. This investment is being wasted.

10/10 This investment would be much better put into creating a stable and cooperative sustainable economy where the focus was on the good of the people, not growth where most of this profit and wealth ends up in the hands of a tiny group of people.
theguardian.com/business/2019/…

We need dialogue about this. Not a headlong rush to vainly attempt to rebuild an economic growth model (that will likely fail), and which needs to be radically overhauled in the near future anyway.
@arusbridger @GeorgeMonbiot @GretaThunberg @NaomiAKlein @GreenRupertRead