![]() It is a bleak picture, auguring not imminent disaster but rather continuing disappointment and vulnerability. Unfortunately, there is no prospect of such agreements any time soon.Īccess every new PS commentary, our entire On Point suite of subscriber-exclusive content – including Longer Reads, Insider Interviews, Big Picture/Big Question, and Say More – and the full PS archive. Sino-American cooperation could close this gap, given the two countries’ unmatched capital and logistical resources, and also could deal swiftly with the looming sovereign-debt crisis that is likely to strike low-income countries and then the rest of the world in 2022. According to the Global Commission’s vaccination countdown, Asia, Europe, and the US are on track to have vaccinated 80% of their populations by March-May 2022, whereas most African countries will not have reached that point until mid-2025. ![]() Similar dynamics are evident in the failure to deliver a sufficient supply of vaccines to poorer countries, a reality made salient by the emergence of the new Omicron variant in southern Africa. Yet without US-China engagement and mutual understanding, little substantive progress against either the pandemic or climate change can be made. Following the logic of feedback loops, tensions over the pandemic and climate change have contributed to the world’s foremost geopolitical crisis. The crisis of trust has weakened the US both internally and on the world stage, contributing to the deteriorating relations between the West and China. This description is especially apt for the United States, the country to which so many look for leadership. In countries and political systems where trust in institutions and the authority of expertise has been undermined by the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis and the growth of social media, coping with new crises remains an uphill struggle. The social, political, and economic stresses introduced by a pandemic then foster attitudes and behaviors that undermine social solidarity, making it harder for governments to secure public buy-in for strong decarbonization measures. Treating them as separate domains will get us nowhere.Įnvironmental stresses increase the likelihood that zoonotic diseases will spread to humans and become pandemics. The only way forward is to recognize the connections between planetary public health, climate change, declining public trust and democratic legitimacy, and geopolitical instability. In a new report, Our Global Condition, I and my colleagues on the Global Commission for Post-Pandemic Policy attribute these difficulties to the fact that we are in the grip of not one but four crises.
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