There’s been a line of thinking burbling around certain corners of the internet that the COVID-19 pandemic is good; that it’s nature’s way of healing itself or alternately punishing us. Those cheering the pandemic and the destruction it has caused dabble in a handful of ideologies, knowingly or unknowingly.
This stance has some serious flaws. It disregards the disproportionate impact different people and societies have on the environment. The assumption that human society and the planet are somehow discrete and utterly separate actors is questionable.
But the most disturbing facet of this argument is how it echoes strains of the environmentalist movement that have advocated for reducing certain populations of human beings. There’s the ecofascist idea of seeing humans as a disease that needs to be cleansed. Minimizing or even encouraging human death and suffering so long as it helps the environment is an excellent example of this dark ideology, and yet variations on the “coronavirus is good for the climate” theme have been cropping up more and more as the virus spreads.
his is a result of classic racism and classism since the “we” the virus has taken a toll on is not evenly distributed. Broad calls for limiting population, or rejoicing in the pollution-stunting effects of the world’s economy grinding to a halt, are indirect endorsements of mass suffering for people who are already most vulnerable and are incidentally, those who contribute least to climate change. Blind applause for environmental progress without acknowledging who’s bearing the cost is simply a rebranding of fascist ideals.
While there is no denying that human interventions have resulted in major environmental hazards, saying that the COVID-19 is a “we’re the virus” moment kicks all of the discussions on the human-nature relationship to the curb. It erases our agency and the fact that this is a moment when we need to acknowledge our partnership with the Earth. Just as flowers need rain to sprout, we need the whole biosphere to exist. Believing the myth that we are separate from nature is stupid.
We don’t need a pandemic to show us that a better world is possible. We first need to acknowledge we’re as much a part of nature as the flora and fauna in this world. The real issue is that corporations and complicit governments have done everything in their power to break that bond with nature. The COVID-19 pandemic shows us that that connection is still there. We need to rise up and hold the people, the authorities and the industries who have lied for profit to account. Only then can we start to repair the damage done. If the virus shows us anything, it’s that rebuilding our relationship with nature is essential and the rest of nature is ready to reconcile.
