The coronavirus, an opportunity to change our relationship with the planet

In mid-December Chinese authorities detected in Wuhan cases of the new type of pneumonia now known as covid-19. The outbreak is said to have originated in one of the many wet markets that specialize in the sale of fresh produce. There the animals are kept alive until they are purchased and are then slaughtered in front of the buyer. Researchers believe that the virus originated in bats and reached humans through an intermediate host, presumably a pangolin. 

In Asian wet markets it is common to find wild animals, from salamanders and turtles to foxes, civets and pangolins. The latter are on the verge of extinction after becoming the most trafficked mammal in the planet. They used to be hunted for their meat, which is considered a delicacy, but now they are trafficked mainly for their scales, used in traditional Chinese medicine and in the manufacture of the leather products American cowboys are fond of. Environmental groups have denounced the cruelty in the treatment of these animals, both when they are hunted and when they are kept in captivity in deplorable conditions.
The alarming situation in which we live has provoked comments and reactions that border on racism and attribute what is happening to certain aspects of Chinese culture. There is no denying that there is a problem, as the Chinese authorities have implicitly recognised by banning the sale and consumption of wild animals. However, the issue goes far beyond the Asian wet markets - or their equivalents in other regions of the world where access to refrigeration is limited, such as Central and West Africa - and we all bear some responsibility. 

The consequences of the agrifood industry
It is hypocritical to denounce the wet markets in China while ignoring our own model of livestock production, increasingly based on intensive farming. The fact that those animals are not pets, exotic or endangered should not blind us to the terrible conditions in which they live, treated as production units and not as creatures able to feel emotions and pain: confined all their lives, with hardly any space to move, mutilated without anaesthetic, incapable of natural behaviours such as nesting and looking after their young, attacking each other out of frustration and stress… 

Overcrowding in factory farms provides an ideal breeding ground for the spread of disease, as denounced in works such as Big Farms Make Big Flu or Farmaggedon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat. It has resulted in diseases such as the Nipah virus, which inspired the film Contagion, and other less deadly but potentially lethal illnesses such as Q fever, hepatitis E, or the recent outbreaks of avian and swine flu. In order to prevent infections it is common practice to use huge amounts of antibiotics; in fact, three quarters of those consumed worldwide. The World Health Organisation has denounced the practice and warned of the threat posed by the lack of new antibiotics, which big pharma is not developing because it is not profitable. 

On the other hand, feeding the animals we eat requires huge amounts of feedstuffs the cultivation of which contributes significantly to deforestation, as we learned last summer during the devastating fires in the Amazon. And deforestation threatens biodiversity and contributes to climate change, which brings us back to the issue of epidemics.  Scientists have warned that melting glaciers could release pathogens and bacteria that have been dormant for thousands of years. However, a more immediate concern is changes in the geographical range of insects, particularly mosquitoes, which for example could lead to the spread of malaria and dengue fever in southern Europe. 

The dark side of globalisation
However, we must not forget that at the root of the problem is human encroachment on the natural world to exploit its resources (wood, minerals, natural gas...), clear land for agriculture and livestock, build roads and other infrastructures, and expand our towns and cities. In the process we corner wildlife and come into contact with as-yet-.unknown pathogens. Two-thirds of new infectious diseases are zoonotic, i.e. they spread from animals to humans, and almost three-quarters of these originate in wildlife. 

Covid-19 is only the latest example. In recent times we have seen, among others, SARS and MERS (also caused by a coronavirus), the Nipah virus, and Ebola. SARS has a slightly higher mortality rate than covid-19 (about 10%) but it is less easily transmitted and only after the infected person has developed symptoms. MERS, the Nipah virus and Ebola have considerably higher mortality rates, but human-to-human transmission is uncommon and Ebola only affects poor areas in Africa whose inhabitants do not often fly by plane. All this has contributed to the experts' warnings being ignored, so the current emergency caught us off guard. 

Because it was not a question of if a pandemic was coming, but when. It is difficult to contain a disease in a context of rapid movement of goods and people and increasing (and often chaotic) urbanization. And we have found ourselves without the tools to deal with it, because they are manufactured in countries that at present are not in a position to do it, or need them for their own populations... or have found a higher bidder. We depend on global supply chains that fragment production in search of efficiency, providing us with the consumer goods we have become accustomed to at cheap prices and generating huge profits for certain companies, which ignore working conditions that would not be tolerated in Western countries and outsource the costs of the pollution caused by the cargo ships that cross the oceans.

But if this crisis has exposed the ecological consequences of our economic system it also has also shown what is possible… if there is a will. We have seen blue skies in Beijing and Delhi, crystal-clear water canals in Venice, and a significant drop in the emissions that cause global warming and the premature death of 8.8 million people a year. We have discovered the possibilities of teleworking, which not only reduces pollution in our cities but questions the need to cluster in big cities. We have seen - for the second time since the beginning of the third millennium - the fragility of our economic model and recognised the importance of public services and the welfare state. We cannot turn the clock back, but we can mitigate the consequences of the damage that has already been done and change course.