Title: Life after COVID-19: Understanding the environment for humanity's survival and sustenance

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Published: Jul 21, 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/eml.23779
Keywords:
Covid-19 Environmental ethics Bioethics Ecofascism Political ecology Sustainability
Ioannis Ladas
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7767-026X
Abstract

The severe restrictive measures imposed in dealing with Covid-19 have altered, among others, our environmental footprint. First reports are especially encouraging, showing reductions in CO2 emissions and improved air quality. In the present essay I shall investigate whether there is a “positive side” to a pandemic that leaves thousands of dead and causes world-wide economic crisis. I shall maintain – with great reservation- that the outcome might have been in the affirmative, while noting that blind approval of the environmental amelioration, due to the imposed restrictions, entails great risk, since it may be born of a dark eco-fascist ideology, promoting peremptory, fascist ideas towards improving the environment. Alongside I shall emphasize that a new Policy is necessary, i.e. a new Ethics, within the framework of rationalizing our relationship with the natural world. Besides, the rate of environmental deterioration does not allow retrospective re-contemplation of everything occurring in our socio-political reality. Consequently, I shall conclude it is required that world economies prosper again while the environment is protected, and that data collected during the quarantine period must serve as orientators for governments in the implementation of their recovery plans.

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