Will coronavirus change how we live?

You can find anything in Heathrow airport if you walk far enough. Near Terminal 2, past the bus station, under a flyover, you can even find God.

The airport chapel is a windowless stone bunker, located down a flight of stairs. Here, at Monday lunchtime, I joined a dozen airport employees for a Catholic mass. It was a surprisingly tender, surreal service, which ended with an a cappella version of “Amazing Grace”. On the way out, I considered buying a postcard of St Christopher, patron saint of travellers.

Most air passengers see no need for such rituals. For decades, crossing continents hasn’t been an act of faith; it has been a fact of life. Flying seems so simple that even a small delay can lead us to rage on social media. It is so mundane that you can partly do it yourself: check yourself in, put your own labels on your bag, pick your own seat on the plane.

“Don’t tell me this isn’t an age of miracles. Don’t tell me we can’t be everywhere at once,” says George Clooney in the film Up in the Air. Clooney’s character is a company man who dreams of reaching 10m air miles and excels at navigating airport security.

Read the story from the Financial Times by Henry Mance - “Will coronavirus change how we live?”

We won’t save the Earth with a better kind of disposable coffee cup

Do you believe in miracles? If so, please form an orderly queue. Plenty of people imagine we can carry on as we are, as long as we substitute one material for another. Last month, a request to Starbucks and Costa to replace their plastic coffee cups with cups made from corn starch was retweeted 60,000 times, before it was deleted.

 Illustration: Ben Jennings

Those who supported this call failed to ask themselves where the corn starch would come from, how much land would be needed to grow it, or how much food production it would displace. They overlooked the damage this cultivation would inflict: growing corn (maize) is notorious for causing soil erosion, and often requires heavy doses of pesticides and fertilisers.

The problem is not just plastic: it is mass disposability. Or, to put it another way, the problem is pursuing, on the one planet known to harbour life, a four-planet lifestyle. Regardless of what we consume, the sheer volume of consumption is overwhelming the Earth’s living systems.

Read the story by George Monbiot from The Guardian - “We won’t save the Earth with a better kind of disposable coffee cup.”