Just as the bushfire crisis was a flaw-exposing dress rehearsal that helped Australia deal with the COVID-19 crisis, the COVID-19 crisis should itself be a dress rehearsal for possibly worse things to come. And the most recent report of the Commission for the Human Future suggests that we would do well to prepare for them.
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| Dr John Hewson heads the Commission for the Human Future. |
Indeed, the report suggests we need more than the traditional Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to illustrate the threats, which can be summarised as follows:
- Decline of natural resources, especially water
- Collapse of ecosystems and mass extinctions
- Population growth and demand beyond the Earth's carrying capacity
- Global warming, sea-level rise and changes in the climate
- Pollution of all life by chemicals
- Famine
- Nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction
- Pandemics of new and untreatable disease
- Powerful, uncontrolled new technologies
- National and global failure to understand and act on these risks.
The report says that, until COVID-19 shook humanity and government, optimism abounded for several decades whereas people calling for fairness, equity or warning of limits to growth and risks were ignored or suppressed. The commission is an Australian organisation, headed by former Opposition leader John Hewson.
Read the story from The Canberra Times by Crispin Hull - “Coronavirus is just a dress rehearsal for what is likely coming next.”
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