By the time you read this, the 2020 U.S. presidential election will be history. Barring something strange happening and since it is 2020, let’s not completely discount that prospect the outcome will be clear. No matter what, a significant proportion of readers won’t be happy with that result. But either way, it’s not going to mark the end of the world as we know it.
The election result won’t signal the end of the COVID-19 pandemic either, although its conclusion should come into focus.
The pandemic’s end won’t mean the end of the world either, although it tragically has meant the end of the world for those who succumbed to it. And it has made life very difficult for those who lost their livelihoods because of the necessary and stringent measures to control the disease.
Yet it too will pass. Not to be a Pollyanna about it, but reasons abound for optimism that vaccines and other treatments will knock back the disease in 2021. Yes, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZenca had to halt clinical trials of their COVID-19 vaccine candidates recently after trial participants had adverse reactions. But those are only two of more than 250 different vaccines in various stages of development. The odds of at least one of them proving effective should tilt in humanity’s favor.
It’s been a terrible year, no doubt. However, people have survived far worse years the early 1940s spring to mind. People are still breathing who can remember those days of a global war that cost about 75 million human lives.
In 1942, could anyone have imagined that Germany and Japan would become close allies of Canada and the U.S.? Those people would have been more likely to predict that some 80 years in the future they would connect via something called Facebook, search something called Google for answers, and communicate via something else known as Zoom.
Not even the science fiction writers of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s foresaw the smartphone. Yet here we are in 2020 checking those devices dozens of times a day.
The decade leading up to the Second World War wasn’t great either. Somehow people survived the Great Depression.
Then as now, during this Great Depression 2.0, most people kept working. It was extremely difficult, though, then as now, for the 20 percent or so who lost their jobs.
In a perverse way, the war ended the Depression and fore shadowed the post war boom that created the modern world. The last thing the world needs now is another world war. But perhaps if we put our energies toward facing another existential threat, we can build a better modern world, a reboot of sorts.
The coronavirus isn’t actually an existential threat. It’s bad enough, but sooner or later, vaccine or not, it will run its course. Sure, another pathogen is bound to emerge and potentially wreak even worse havoc. So, the world would be wise to prepare for that.
An even greater threat, however, is what humans and our voracious appetites are doing to the environment. Arguably our greatest existential threat is from climate change caused by carbon dioxide emitted from the burning of fossil fuels. It’s an idea that is still difficult from many people to accept. But it’s happening, nonetheless.
Fortunately, solutions exist. One way is to shift to electric-powered vehicles from those powered by fossil fuels. That shift is underway.
When a representative of Ford says the company is going “all in on electric” for its Transit vans and that “there’s no future for diesel” in that segment as chief engineer Ray Eyles said at the NTEA’s recent Truck Product Conference it’s clear that a big change is already underway. That was Ford talking, not Tesla.
It doesn’t hurt that automakers can now tout the lower cost of ownership of electric vehicles. They’re proving cheaper to operate and maintain than their internal- combustion forebears. So you can still deny that climate change is happening while justifying going electric unless you literally have money to burn.
Skeptics might argue that the transition to electric won’t happen fast enough to forestall the existential climate threat or that a vaccine won’t rescue the world from COVID-19. They merely underestimate human ingenuity and our capacity, once all other options are exhausted, to put aside our differences and solve great problems.