As bodies packed together, a mass of glitter, champagne and excitement, to welcome in the new year and new decade just ten months ago, no one thought that such a scene would be unthinkable so soon after. Even then, the virus was beginning to spread. In the coming months, flights would be cancelled, sports seasons called off, museums, theme parks, and universities closed. All the noise and movement, the hallmarks of normalcy in our society, ceased.
It was science, meticulous building and testing and perfecting and creating, that built this complex, shared, unsustainable world. It was science—the way that a virus shuts down a body, lingers on surfaces, spreads to other bodies—that made it impossible for the world to continue as it was. And it was science, or more precisely, the system of technological communication that people have designed, that alerted everyone of the need to shut everything down.
So, the world went home. And at home, people went online. We looked inwards, but we also looked to each other, and the way we did it is a testament to the success of modern technology in creating a new realm for social interaction. People also turned to gardening, cooking, and bread baking as ways to pass the countless hours at home. These, too, are a science: an older kind, a timeless kind, chemicals interacting with chemicals in the heat of a seldom used oven. People rediscovered their own ability to make things, to grow things, as the world slowed down in quarantine. But not everyone was at home and online. More than ever, essential workers relied on technology to hold up what remained of the societal infrastructure. Factories continued, despite multiple outbreaks among workers, to produce and deliver goods to grocery stores. Drivers from food delivery apps dropped food directly at the houses of people who couldn’t safely enter supermarkets. Doctors used ventilators to keep patients with the virus breathing. The phrase “essential worker” was popularized, but each group relied on essential technologies to keep the population fed, home, and safe.
The workings of science did more than just sustain. They also inspired. At the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, NASA launched its first manned commercial rocket, marking the beginning of a new era of space travel. People from around the world watched onscreen as science made something so seemingly magical and otherworldly happen. It was a reminder that it is still possible for people all around the world, all of whom are impacted by the pandemic, to look up at the sky and dream of a future, and to feel proud of what science can achieve.
Science and fiction may have blurred when some articles about nature’s rebirth as a result of the pandemic were popularized, like that of dolphins returning to Venetian canals, but there was some fact in the coverage, too. Pollution levels dipped internationally, if only for a while, demonstrating how intrusive the processes are that fuel our pre-pandemic society. But nature is equally uncompromising in its determination to thrive, and after only a few weeks demonstrated the resilience of its ancient processes. Nature is a reminder that scientific achievement predates humanity.
It’s all science, our lives and societies. Science is behind our education and entertainment, supports our creativity and both fuels and is fueled by the limits of our imaginations. Yet nothing served as so potent a reminder about the human relationship to science as the virus itself. The pandemic showed that despite our ability to create and imagine, and despite the complexity of modern life, people are still just bodies, capable of contracting and spreading microscopic particles that in weeks can bring our world to a halt. No single body can be separated from the vast network in which it operates, and it is our interconnection that makes us so vulnerable. Society flourishes and crumbles around the resilience of our very fallible human forms, which scientists don’t yet fully understand.
Science, ideally, is behind the policies that states adopt to combat the spread of the virus. In much of Europe, public policies informed by science prevented countless infections. In other countries, like the U.S., a denial of the scientifically proven efficacy of masks and a refusal to follow social distancing guidelines has resulted in the highest infection rate on the globe. The outcry against the dangers of COVID-19 echoes that of the climate change deniers. If nothing else, science should be valued for its ability to save lives.
The past few months have given us cause to reevaluate every part of society: our healthcare infrastructure, the way that businesses and governments, from the local to national level, function, the role of international organizations like the WHO, and our values as individuals and as one global collective. The pandemic revealed the flaws and weaknesses in a system that has been plowing forward, slowing for nothing and no one, since the Industrial Revolution. Now, we have a unique opportunity to rebuild every area of society. Sustainability must be the ideology that guides our recovery, with the science of climate justice underlying every decision as we go forward. In the blog posts that follow, I want to more closely examine the global perspectives on the future of climate progress. I hope to inspire readers to think about how sustainability and social equity are interrelated concepts that should be built into every aspect of our shared future. The atmosphere has no boundaries, and neither should our solutions, in this one, shared world. We are experiencing a moment of disruption—next comes creation.
Featured image from Diplomatist
Written by Francesca Von Krauland, Columbia University Masters Student in Global Thought and Climate Justice Now Intern.