Thread by @clim8resistance

Ecological mysticism: "COVID-19 is not a random event. It is a symptom of a global economic system that is destroying the living planet and killing off our magnificent wildlife."

opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/…

Thousands will cheer him. Mostly from positions of historically unprecedented levels of affluence. The claim surely cannot be denied.

Monbiot: "Around three-quarters of new diseases that infect humans come from other animals. In the case of COVID-19, scientists believe the virus originated in the wild bat population before being transmitted to humans."

Even if it were true -- which is something of a presupposition much more than a testable fact -- it remains true that communicable diseases exert a far lower toll today than any point in history.

Which makes his point false.

Deaths from Covid 19, in almost any decade prior to the 2000s, would have gone unnoticed and unremarked on. They would have barely registered in statistics.

So Monbiot rattles off this event as though it were unprecedented in history, as though it made a moral imperative to change society, and if it brought shame on anyone who argued otherwise.

It is historically unprecedented insofar as it is the weakest pathogen ever to have brought the world to a standstill. And it does create a moral imperative, not to reverse the direction of society, but to enhance whatever made us so historically well-protected from diseases.

That definitely means creating more wealth. And that may well including doing more of what Monbiot calls 'environmental destruction'.

Painful, obscene, and brutal diseases are natural. Only a mystical weirdo pretends that 'nature' allows for disease-free, happy, and long life.

It really needs to be remarked on now, to future historians, before this weird, mystical religion takes over society, that some of us saw it coming.

Some of us understood that 'business as usual' was better than suspending all forms of economic life.

Ditto 'climate change'. Some of us recognised that policy seemingly intended to stop it created greater risks than the thing itself.