(How) Coronavirus is a Small Taste of the Dystopian Future

If We’re Overwhelmed by Coronavirus, What About Climate Change, Ecocollapse, Economic Stagnation?

There are many ways to think about Coronavirus. But there’s one way in particular that’s been nagging away at me — and I bet the same thought’s occurred to you, too. Coronavirus is a dry run for an apocalyptic future.

Coronavirus has caused all kinds of mayhem. Financial markets cratering. Borders closing. Whole nations under lockdown. Panic, like panic buying and hoarding. Catastrophic enough for you? We probably wouldn’t have imagined any of those things just a few short months ago, even though this was a troubled age.

And yet the truth is that Coronavirus is just a harbinger of things to come. Much, much bigger and far, far more…catastrophic…catastrophes. Like climate change. Like mass extinction. The waves of migration that ensue. The globe’s growing inequality and resource scarcity. And the authoritarianism all that, in turn, breeds. Let me put that another way.

The choice of catastrophes we face this century is genuinely stunning, staggering, beggars belief. Climate change? Check. Mass extinction? Check. Resource scarcity? Check. Ecological collapse? Financial crisis? Economic stagnation? Fast becoming…