What are we learning from this?

The absence of much activity during the (Covid-19) shutdown can provide a time for thinking, to set aside the bothersome everyday problems that occupy most of our thought, and to ponder where we are as a nation, where we are going, and what to expect. Once it is over can be the time for action, so we no longer drift with business as usual, as a great ship speeding full steam ahead for the rocks without pilot or captain.

The major, global, big picture issue of concern is the looming collapse as the human plague overwhelms the world. It is happening, and is ignored, as an unrecognised elephant in the room.

Humanity has always damaged and destroyed the environment and driven rival species into extinction. Back in the 1970s, as I began a career in futures research, I wondered at forecasts of a tripling of the world population in one lifetime – it seemed impossible. Now I am almost 80, I find that the global population has increased by a greater factor – 3.4 – since my birth.

We (all of us, across the planet) have entered into the time of collapse, having gone past the limits to growth, collectively still wedded to growth, quite ignorant of the absurdity of a supposedly intelligent species that cannot consider the reality of life on a finite planet, the advisability of keeping numbers to a sensible level, to allow for the life of other species and the natural environment, and to provide a secure and prosperous life for all, including the time for leisure that became possible in the 1960s before being forgotten in the inequality of globalisation that was forced on us in the 1980s, to become a religion supported by the brainwashing of ubiquitous advertising.

Considerable research identified the many aspects of the overshoot and the timescale involved. Yet it is as if that effort never happened.

This critical period has been signalled by a series of foreshocks, problems that were identified in advance as the long-term trends became clear. These include the 2008 economic crisis (foretold in my 1989 Excess Capital), the coming of the oil peak in conventional oil production, the recognition that human activity is leading to widespread extinction of other species (the Anthropocene Extinction), the waves of refugees (with no recognition that a major cause was the overpopulation of many regions well past their carrying capacity), climate change resulting from greenhouse emissions (the record of New Zealand is dire, despite decades of empty posturing), and now a global pandemic.

It has always been obvious that packing too many people in, with ready contact across the world, would allow disease to spread easily. Thus, Barbara Tuckman wrote in 1978 of the plague that killed one-third or one-half of Europeans in "the calamitous 14th Century" as a distant mirror for our time.

There are no surprises. Nor is it any surprise that we are ill-prepared, and that the question of overpopulation is off the radar. Our rulers thrive from the work of citizen ants, as globalisation has destroyed self-sufficiency and removed the option of a leisure society – all dreams of the far-off 1960s.

Once this pandemic lockdown is over the nation could take a deep breath and consider carefully what we have learned and what we have realised as our thoughts range wide, and then take suitable action. One obvious step would be to open up the debate and to set aside a dedicated team to step outside everyday concerns and consider that big picture, a think tank, acting for the common good, to explore this information, to consider the past forecasts that have proven robust, to report and open up a dialogue on how to adapt to changing times in a critical period of human evolution.

I am pessimistic; past experience shows that this is unlikely, and that the previous status quo will be re-established, as we drift onwards to the next crisis.