Bruce Bisset: Fear is a mind killer

Bruce Bisset says the virus is a symptom and climate change is the cause.

Fear is a great leveller. Fear of a disease, or of an economic crash, or simply of change; fear drives the way we humans deal with our mortality and construct our civilisations and beliefs.

When we let our fears rule us – and we do – we deal only in the here-and-now and vainly deny any greater threats looming over the horizon.

No surprise then that we've reacted almost with relief to a pandemic like coronavirus in the face of climate change – despite the one is only a symptom of the other.

Like climate change, a virus does not care if you are rich or poor, young or old, good or bad; it will strike down someone as privileged as Prince Charles, or as viciously immoral as Harvey Weinstein, or as noble as Greta Thunberg, without distinction.

Just as it will a factory worker in China, a pensioner in Italy, a beggar in India, or a schoolchild in New Zealand.

Let's make no bones about that. It's no great leap to grasp that the stresses of collapsing ecosystems brought about by changing climatic conditions are driving nature to produce wilder and more virulent diseases.

Viruses, like every other organism on the planet, just want to survive. Unlike more complex lifeforms, a virus is a fast responder to evolutionary need; it will mutate to suit new conditions and leap into new hosts as soon as it is pressured, environmentally.

Coronavirus is a symptom; climate change is the cause.

Bruce Bisset

Expect then that Covid-19 will be followed by Slayer-22, and Killer-26, and so on. Unless we all sit up and take good notice now, and make some serious shifts in our global way of life to not just try to vaccinate against the symptoms, but tackle the root problem.

Let's fervently hope that this lockdown gives us all opportunity to reflect on that.

And then act on it.

Sure, one "positive" about the response to coronavirus is the respite a dramatic drop in greenhouse gas emissions is giving a world whose respiratory systems are clogged and struggling to breathe.

But if it's only a pause, a slight remission until business as usual ramps up again – as it will, and quickly, if the thrust to "recover" economically is pursued with half the vigour deniers like Donald Trump doubtless intend – then this pandemic will be only the first of a worsening cycle of disasters.

At what point will the greed merchants and the eco-fascists realise that the cost to their precious economies is greater for not tackling climate change as hard or harder than they're now being forced to tackle Covid-19?

I'd like to think it will be in time rather than too late. And that the time to wake up to that is now.

Because here's the bald truth of it: we humans will not die en masse if we deny money as our god. Money doesn't care. But we will all die if we deny we need our planet to be healthy to support us.

It's really a very simple choice, isn't it. All you need to do is lose your fears.

Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet. Views expressed are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's.