Our blog of March 28 issued a call for comments on solving the Global MegaCrisis. The blog of April 11 presented presented responses from seven contributors that concluded the coronavirus shows the present world order is not sustainable and suggests moving to a global consciousness. We now present responses from the second round of this study using collective intelligence again. Quick summaries of the responses shown below show some who see more peril ahead and those who see the promise of change.
Jose Cordeiro captures this nicely by noting that the Chinese word for “crisis” means both threat and opportunity.
Hazel Henderson, Futurist and CEO of Ethical Markets Media, offers guides to avoid a collapse of the Internet under heavy loads caused by the virus crisis. “Now that everyone and every organization on the planet is going virtual … the question is on everyone’s lips: ‘Will the coronavirus break the internet?’ We at Ethical Markets are using some simple rules… They won’t harm anyone’s business or other outreach activities. Rather such politeness and consideration for essential users and public information can help assure that the internet can continue to be the vital backbone of our lives for the foreseeable future.
Peter King, Environmental Consultant, provides comments from two of his associates in Asia: “Among my peers, there is considerable anxiety about what kind of world will emerge from COVID-19. The accumulating threats to the planet—climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, illegal wildlife trade, air and water pollution, depletion of fish stocks, loss of coral reefs, among others—have been put on the back burner, while billions of people are hunkering down at home. On the other side of this pandemic, will we go all out for economic recovery at the cost of the remaining absorptive capacity of the planet, or will we have learned our ultimate lesson—Nature always wins in the end.
Jose Cordeiro, Vice Chair, HumanityPlus and Director of The Millennium Project, shows how this crisis presents both threats and opportunities. “We are currently living in a MegaCrisis, which implies MegaDanger but also MegaOpportunity. Even though Covid-19 originated in China, it is now a global problem and it requires a global solution. This MegaCrisis can be the MegaOpportunity to move forward together as one global family in our small planet.
Michael Lee, Futurist and Author, examines the possibilities: “We could be facing unemployment and poverty on a scale that will dwarf the impacts of the financial crisis of 2008-9. When the global economy awakes from its lockdown hibernation, will it be a zombie economy? Will the epoch of wars and empires, which has engulfed history and caused more death and grief than I have the stomach to calculate, finally be over? Can we come together as one human race, black, white, yellow, brown and all the beautiful shades of human skin, to focus on the one reason why we’re all here in the first place: to use our fleeting lives for the total, ethical upliftment of human civilization?”
Fadi Bayoud, Consultant, Strategic Anchors, offers his vision of a preferable future: “beautiful as a priceless piece of art where: Spirituality drives human relationships. Science is respected, and governments invest more in scientific research … People’s development becomes a social policy. Education becomes free and foresight oriented …Economy becomes shared and sustainable … The countryside and Nature are a source for spiritual, psychological, and somatic healing. Industrial energy production is sustainable. Individual households produce their own energy needs … where rivers and lakes are source of pure and clean water. Health paradigm shifts to prevention.”
Julio Millan, President of the World Future Society, Mexico, thinks “The megacrisis … is showing us that we have been leading the wrong model: it is not about individual gains, but about the common welfare. … to behave like good citizens and understand what it means to do things for our community, to be empathetic to our neighbors, and to create better societies. Our concern now should be, what are we going to do when the liberal order, to which we are so accustomed, falls? We are in a historical moment, because after the pandemic our preconception of the world is going to change: we are entering a new era.
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