Nick Dearden
When you look at COVID, it is an example that we need to learn from in terms of how we deal with other crises, because as bad as the pandemic was, the climate crisis is going to be much, much worse. What we saw is that we had a global economy developed in the 1990s in the image of corporate power. It was all about forwarding corporate interests and the right to do whatever you want with your money, whenever you want, wherever you are in the world.
That system fundamentally failed us. That was very clear, as I’ve already said, for Global South countries, but to some degree, it was clear for all of us. The immense quantity of public money that we put into this ultimately served to make an absolute fortune for pharmaceutical corporations. For Moderna, several members of its board became multibillionaires, including its CEO. That was because knowledge that should really be seen as a public good was treated as a private asset.
If that was a problem for COVID, it’s also going to be an enormous problem when it comes to dealing with the climate crisis. The climate technologies that all countries on Earth will require to deal with climate change are going to be held by a handful of corporations. Most countries in the world are going to have to rent those technologies back from those corporations — in many cases, I imagine, for a very high cost.
That is no way to deal with what is probably the most serious crisis that humanity has ever faced. The rules, treaties, and institutions of the global economy, like the World Trade Organization, are not in any way set up to help us deal with the problems that we face as humanity, and we need to begin dismantling them.
As bad as the pandemic was, the climate crisis is going to be much, much worse.
One of the things we were campaigning for during the pandemic was the idea of a waiver of intellectual…
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Auteur: Nick Dearden
