2 ms·
I think many people are still thinking of this as a temporary crisis that hopefully we can forget asap and turn back to "normal" as if this part of 2020 never h
by PeterStuer 6y ago
I think many people are still thinking of this as a temporary crisis that hopefully we can forget asap and turn back to "normal" as if this part of 2020 never happened. It is understandable as this crisis has not been easy on anyone.
However, I would dare to expect more from a long term policy perspective. There are many things that were unsustainable with our socio-economic lifestyle long before the Corona crisis. While we can not prevent the impacts on the individual people businesses, we could use the funds that are rightfully mobilized to aid them to shape a "new" economy that is more aligned with the coming climate crisis.
We did this in the past (also much too late) e.g. with the coal mining sector in Belgium. For a long time we tried to keep that activity alive just because 'jobs, jobs, jobs'. It took decades before politics was ready to stop trowing good money after bad, and create regional re-conversion funds to turn those local economies around and give them a 'new' economic activity model that did have a future.
This is why I would advocate a scenario that spend on those people/companies impacted in industries such as aviation to turn them towards to other more sustainable parts of the future economy rather than just keep poring in money to let them cling to an ever more precarious activity.