Fear always erupts at times of general insecurity, and the greater and wider the uncertainty, the more extreme the reasons cited to alleviate it.
Prompted by the global coronavirus pandemic, the Commission for the Future, an Australian National University organisation of researchers and public figures set up in 2017 to focus on global challenges facing humanity, has identified 10 threats to the world’s survival.
It has just published its first report, which conveys a blunt message. Governments should use the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic to address 10 potentially catastrophic threats to the survival of the human race. The coronavirus pandemic has brought other risks to civilisation into sharper focus and showed how “vulnerable and unprepared” societies are and that “this lack of preparedness means humanity will continue to be ambushed by unforeseen crises”.
The 10 threats are: climate change; environmental decline and extinction; nuclear weapons; resource scarcity (including water scarcity); food insecurity; dangerous new technologies; overpopulation; chemical pollution; pandemic disease; and denial and misinformation.
The commission argues that each problem can only be addressed by nations working together. It proposes a range of solutions, including a ban on nuclear weapons, minimum emissions reduction targets of 50 per cent by 2030, a ban on new fossil fuel projects, universal laws that protect wildlife and endangered species, a shift to a renewable global food system, and efforts to tackle the influence of vested interests on governments.
The proposals made by the commission are eminently sensible. None of them are new. Indeed, many of the solutions, such as banning nuclear weapons, have been around for decades. The difference is that we are suddenly more keenly aware of the dangers as a result of heightened international political tensions, huge scientific and medical advances and their dissemination through mass global communication.
Humanity’s vulnerability through ecological collapse, food insecurity and war and conflict now appears more critical. Moreover, no government in the world has a plan for meeting all these risks, dealing with them as a total system and finding the safest way out of them.
Malta is not immune. Climate change, environmental decline and extinction, water scarcity and vulnerability to pandemics, to take but four, should give us pause. We are eternal optimists believing that even though over time the chances of a disaster are quite large, it won’t happen soon, and it won’t happen to us.
Like others, COVID-19 caught us by surprise though it has been handled competently, sensibly and successfully. But our record on water is abysmal, despite a series of reports over several decades about the precariousness of the water table. The lack of a sustainability plan in the face of the escalating threats on every aspect of Maltese life of climate change appears to be a distant priority.
We routinely ignore these potential catastrophes because they seem far into the future without thinking through how disruptive and costly they will be when they actually happen. We are short-termist in our thinking, and hate investing in something that may happen in the future.
The lesson from the threats to humanity identified by this report is the need to confront these existential threats and for government to commit itself to an annual parliamentary audit holding it to account on its preparations for these high probability, high impact threats to our way of life.