Saying things are rough these days is an understatement.
As I write these words India bakes in their highest recorded temperature, Mexico is also experiencing a heatwave and its water supply is at risk (like Bogota’s). Israel is close to completing 8 months of committing a genocide live-streamed for the world to see, killing an untold number of innocent civilians, mostly children and women. Ukraine is still fighting to keep its territory form an emboldened and invading Russia. Sudan and Congo have their own, less publicised, genocides to worry about. China has recently done military exercises to remind everyone that Taiwan could be retaken any day.
The Sars-Cov-2 virus continues to spread unchecked, mutating and evolving past our capacity to vaccinate effectively, while most of the population of the world seems to have decide to bury their heads in the sand and give in to infinite infection and its consequences. But COVID is not alone, along with it we are seeing the rise of diseases that have been more or less under control until now and in the not so distant horizon we can already see what could become the next pandemic: the H5N1 bird flu. It has infected a significant number of cattle in farms in the US, and people are already trying to buy their infected milk, supposedly to acquire immunity to this new virus, despite this being in no way recommended by any scientist or health professional worth their salt.
In Aotearoa, massive protests line the streets with Māori people speaking out against the policies of a government that has quickly acted to erode their rights, environmental protections and education standards that were hard fought for, and were starting to turn the tide on decades of colonial education. Every day, we see reports of hundreds upon hundreds of people losing their jobs at the same time the already fragile welfare safety net is being stripped down. Healthcare systems are constantly overloaded and unable to meet the needs of all their patients, schools are rife with infections, and staff can’t keep up. The so-called “Cost of Living” Crisis (which really is nothing more than increasing inequality and unfairness in the distribution of wealth) is being felt by everyone and families across the motu are struggling to meet their basic needs.
This combination of increasing and potentially compounding problems is what people are calling the Polycrisis.
None of this is great and there is no signs that any of it will get better soon. So what do we do?
I wish I had a definitive answer. Sadly all I know is that our current economic system is making all of these problems worse.
Smarter people than me point out that the answers are already here. We just need to organise and do them together.
Degrowth communism, as explained by Kohei Saito, is an interesting option. Community gardens, organising, sustainable travel, shared property instead of endless consumption.
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