At the conclusion of the recent G7 summit in the UK, the participants pledged one billion Covid vaccine doses to poor countries as a “big step towards vaccinating the world,” according to the BBC. Britain’s Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, whose country presided over the summit, stated that “The world was looking to us to reject some of the selfish, nationalistic approaches that marred the initial global response to the pandemic and to channel all our diplomatic, economic and scientific might to defeating Covid for good.”
In all honesty, I doubt that concern for the world is the G7’s priority. I can understand why they would want to calm or somehow tame the pandemic, but I don’t think it’s out of remorse for their prior behavior or that they have suddenly changed their skins. I also don’t think that the pandemic is over, despite the existence of vaccines. It may not erupt as explosively as before, but it will continue to disturb us for a long time coming.
It’s not as if we should be afraid of Covid; humanity is dealing with myriad permanent threats, and Covid isn’t the worst of them. Take HIV, for example, it is still around and still scares us, but we’ve learned to live with it. The question we should ask is not why we cannot annihilate such plagues, but why they appear at all. It’s as if nature is trying to tell us something but we are refusing to listen, so it has to try different ways and at different volumes to get our attention.
When we finally listen, we will realize that nature’s message is very simple: Stop mistreating nature and each other. Your exploitation of each other and of nature is destroying everything that you have worked so hard to build, everything that nature has built, and if you ruin it, you will ruin yourselves. A few decades ago, speaking about climate change was considered subversive, or at least innovative and avant-garde. Today, it is mainstream. This does not speak in our favor, but rather shows how little we have done to solve the problem.
But in truth, climate change isn’t our real problem. The “climate” between us is the problem. If we solve this, we will solve everything else, including climate change, Covid, HIV, and every other problem. The atmosphere between us causes us to pollute our water resources, makes us wage wars against each other, military or economic, that to win them, we are willing to deplete the land, enslave entire populations, spike the price of staple food and energy for no reason, and do everything we can to hurt our enemies, who are basically everyone besides ourselves. In other words, our hatred of each other is the root cause of all our problems, and Covid-19 is just a minor symptom of this malady of hatred. Heal the hatred, and you have healed everything else.
It is my hope that in the near future, humanity will come to its senses, take its future into its hands, and implement a global educational solidarity program that will focus on uniting the entire family of nations. Its goal will not be to undermine nations’ sovereignty, take over their economies, or harm them in some other way, but to save humanity from self-destruction.
The G7, being a group of some of the most powerful and influential nations on Earth, can and should set an example of such a move. I have little hope that they will, but I know that they must, as do all of us. The other option, I’m afraid, is very bleak and filled with agony. I wouldn’t want our children and grandchildren to grow into a dead and hate-filled world.
Photo Caption:
G7 Summit Family Photo
(L to R): Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, European Council President Charles Michel, U.S. President Joe Biden, Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi, France’s President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel pose for a family photograph of the G7 summit in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, England on June 11, 2021. ( The Yomiuri Shimbun )
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