Corona, hemp and the economy
Like a lot of people I’m home at the moment, sick (probably not corona, but the government has told us to take more precautions than usual)
This pandemic makes some things clearer, one thing you can almost hear the earth breathing a sigh of relief because the skies are not so clogged up with aeroplanes, because we are not buying so much useless crap and generally giving our resources a bit of a rest and time to recuperate (except for toilet paper of course)
It feels crazy that the governments can mobilise and react to a sudden threat like this but our earth being slowly poisoned by fossil fuels, choked by plastic and raped of resources that is just business as usual.
The jobs that are still carrying on (essential services) show you how unessential a lot of our jobs are, they are there purely to stimulate a dead economy. I say a dead economy because that is what the economy is sadly creating in this world, the more a country consumes of the resources and exports the more it is rewarded. How is this sustainable, even sustainable companies need to follow this economic foundation to be able to survive.
Countries are all talking about rescue packages and how to re stimulate the economy. Here in Sweden something I have always thought is great is that no matter what job you have, you have a good standard salary, if you’re throwing away trash or working as a doctor you make a liveable salary. Everyone is taken care of. If only we could as a civilisation determine what companies or products benefit us environmentally and do away with the rest starting with the products that are clearly damaging our planet we would thrive.
We are so focused on renewable energy solutions, yes that is great but what we use our energy for is also important, to produce plastic crap that clogs our oceans just for the sake of keeping the dead economy alive. Unemployment in my home country of South Africa is 30 percent. That is an insane amount of largely capable people wanting to work. If countries were not chained the debt system of global banking and everyone had a similar system as Sweden taken one step further where truly sustainable jobs were created imagine putting that 30 percent of unemployed people to create solar panels or in hydroponic farming, reforestation, beach cleanups, social upliftment.
How will the earth change when lock-down’s are over and a vaccine has been created? My bet is the governments will continue talking about bailouts and we will forge ahead blindly as always keeping the gdp alive at all costs, human and environmental. But the beast will die quicker if we don’t feed it. We might not be able to change an economic system but we can all choose what we spend our money on and what we decide not to spend our money on. Invest in something you believe in will help the earth and eachother. We all depend on it.