As a climate activist living during the coronavirus pandemic, the world feels pretty heavy these days. Watching the pandemic in America is like watching the entire climate crisis unfold over just a few months. First, experts give warnings that are largely dismissed, but are later proved right. Then, as their predictions come true, our political institutions fail to protect the public interest, especially as the suffering falls upon groups who were already the most vulnerable. For COVID-19, we weren’t able to avoid the trap of undervaluing our expert warnings and digging a hole for society. The next challenge for those who care about justice is to avoid that trap on climate change.I stray away from making precise connections between individual weather events and climate, since it can feel opportunistic, especially when people are suffering.
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Communal expressions of grief have been shaped over time by religion, gender and power in ways that leave us with few ways to express mourning in public. In response to the #NamingTheLost, a vigil in which over 24 hours people impacted by the pandemic read names of those lost to COVID-19, a minister who has walked her own journey with grief reflects on grief customs her own ancestors lost and the work of mourning as resistance when lives are treated as disposable. Yesterday at my church’s virtual Zoom service, our preacher Priscilla held up her Sunday copy of the New York Times to the screen.
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On March 23, 2020, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a global ceasefire because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war…That is why today, I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world. It is time to put the armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives.” Many nations responded while others did not. Not unlike the Olympic Truce, called for every two years before the Olympic Games, this ceasefire is necessary and hopeful for our world, but war and war business keep leaders fighting.
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In his December 12, 2018 article, New York Times Opinion Columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about a single child, Abrar, who was 12 years old and weighed only 28 pounds. The starvation of this single child tells the story of the misery wrought by war. This horrific proxy war between Iranian-backed Houthis and US-backed Saudi Arabia
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