No, “We” are Not the Virus.
Seeing humans as separate from nature is what got us here in the first place.
As the coronavirus forces countries across the world to shut down, and the water and air clear, it feels like Mother Nature is not just healing herself, but striking back.
The dramatic improvement in the environment has led to many social media posts claiming in various forms that this shows that it is we humans who are the real virus. The cleaner air from China to Italy, the return of animals to the canals of Venice, and the general drop in Co2 levels has led many to conclude that once again, like with other pandemics in the past, nature is marshalling her resources and unleashing some kind of biological weapon in an attempt to wipe out an invasive species with no appreciation for our planet. Given the dramatic improvement in the environment over the past few weeks this is understandable.
But it is also foolish and counterproductive. For it is the belief that humans exist outside of nature, or even that we exist in a state of permanent conflict, that led to our calamitous attitude to the environment in the first place. We are here because we have been acting like it is humans or nature, when it should be, and for a long time was, humans and nature.
For hundreds of thousands of years our species was able to live in small groups whose impact on the environment was negligible. But for the past five hundred years (give or take) the consensus among the powerful has been that nature exists only to be exploited for financial gain. This has been true ever since Columbus brought enslaved Africans to fell the forests of Madeira to provide the timber for the boats to take him and his crew to the New World, two events that for many mark the beginning of our modern capitalist economic system.
Ever since that moment we have continued to live under an economic system that has transformed the world while simultaneously putting it under levels of pressure never before seen. Sadly, in addition to damaging our air, killing millions of animals, thousands of humans, driving up sea levels and the rest, the capitalist environmental crisis has seemingly accelerated the transmission of viruses from humans to animals, a consequence of yet another monumental decision our species took tens of thousands of years ago when we started domesticating animals. Professors of history and biology and doctors have all documented the way that the enclosing of hundreds or thousands of animals, and placing them close to humans who have day-to-day interactions with them, allowed a myriad of diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis and influenza, to jump from animals to humans. The corporate food system, and increasing desire for animal protein in rapidly developing countries such as China, has led to a concentration of this practice. This is why we have seen so many cases of avian influenza over the past 15 years. Many of them were largely confined to Asia, though cases were reported in the Western world. But the current coronavirus pandemic has concentrated peoples’ minds like never before on the precarious and unsustainable relationship we currently have with nature. The current Covid-19 outbreak almost definitely started in a live-animal market in Wuhan in China’s Hubei province. It is unclear exactly in which animal the virus originated, but so far the top contenders have been bats, or even pangolins.
The exploitation of our planet for economic growth and financial gain has had a range of effects, some good, but most overwhelmingly bad. But we must remember that it is the economic system we live under – a system that disproportionately benefits a few while exploiting many – that is responsible for the damage to our planet. We should remember that millions of people did not choose a system that consumes public resources for private gain. They did not choose a system that puts us in a permanent state of conflict with nature. But those same millions are the ones who breathe the air and drink the water polluted by this system.
That this system began with the enslavement of one weaker group of people by a stronger one to destroy a forest can be seen as a metaphor for where to assign blame: not the poor and vulnerable, but the rich and powerful who perpetuate an economic system that enriches a few, immiserates many, and devastates our planet. And those who crow that finally humans will be taught a lesson would do well to remember that in a world as unequal as our own, it is the global poor and vulnerable who will no doubt suffer the most, while the wealthy nations responsible for climate change will be able to offer their people far superior levels of protection and care.
In the face of a pandemic like the one we are currently facing we should not dimly wish for our own destruction. We should strive to live under a system that acknowledges that the world is one and human.
It should be a system whose starting principle is this: we are a part of nature.
It is not humanity or nature.
It is humanity and nature.