WEBINAIRE Friday Lunch Meeting Debate, Christian de Perthuis, November 20th 2020

It is unimaginable that the shock of Covid-19, having affected billions of people simultaneously, will be only a parenthesis before the “return to normal”. In this book, Christian de Perthuis attempts to discern the transformations in the economic organization and the social sphere that are likely to modify the conditions of climate action in the future. “The coronavirus has brought the powerful to their knees and the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our thoughts still rush back and forth, dreaming of a return to normal, trying to connect the future to the past, to stitch them together, refusing to admit the breakup. Arundhati Roy The economy of containment has brought the world to a halt. The Covid-19 has purified the air in our cities and brought down CO2 emissions like no policy before. In an emergency, he imposed drastic reorganizations of production, trade and work. It deepened inequalities, but catalyzed new forms of solidarity. A shock that has affected billions of people simultaneously cannot constitute a simple parenthesis before the “return to normal”. In this essay, Christian de Perthuis urges us not to try to “stitch the future and the past together”, to use Arundhati Roy’s beautiful phrase. He suggests operating “back and forth” between one and the other to shed light on the ruptures that will structure the world of tomorrow. It reveals to us what the health disaster can change for climate action. The post-Covid-19 world will be more digital and less carbon intensive. The redistribution of the flow of people and goods paves the way for an acceleration of the energy transition. Distributive carbon pricing, that of more united societies. The fight against the emergence of new viruses obliges us to respect nature better: to protect the ecosystems that store CO2 from the atmosphere and ward off attacks from new viruses. The post-Covid-19 economy will have to be based on new relationships with the natural environment and the multitude of living beings that make it up. 

 

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