Post by account_disabled on Mar 11, 2024 3:28:50 GMT -5
Doctors deciding who gets intensive care and who doesn't, to world leaders trading economic damages for lives saved. Deserted streets, business closures, mass unemployment and rising death tolls are a stark contrast against any positive vision of 2020 and beyond. This crisis has revealed both the Spain mobile number list Interconnected nature of our world and how vulnerable humanity and our way of life are to an external shock. The replication of a small protein strand has almost completely paralyzed the activities of the most successful species on the planet. It has also revealed how dependent we are on the things we often take for granted: an effective health system with doctors, nurses and scientists who protect us from disease. Benefits of a well-functioning economy, which provides the jobs, products and services we need.
The freedom of movement to meet with family, friends and colleagues for leisure and work. World trade. And yet, on reflection, I still believe that we should be optimistic about the future. The crisis is terrible, but the response shows how we can overcome this challenge through cooperation, applying ingenuity for positive purposes and investing in businesses for positive impact. There are clear parallels with the way we have to address the challenges of the climate emergency, the loss of biodiversity on land and sea and the sharing of prosperity more broadly and fairly. I believe that once we have suppressed this pandemic, we will intensify our response to these challenges, underpinning the main sustainable trends. The last decade was, in many ways, the best that humanity has ever had.
Judging by improvements in levels of poverty, disease, war, education and democracy around the world, there has never been a decade like this; we find ways to dramatically improve quality of life, increase resilience, and do much more with fewer resources. These macro trends are positive, powerful and predictable. The air we breathe in uk cities, the air is cleaner than it has been since the start of the industrial revolution. If we look at pm10 pollution levels in london (which with long exposure leads directly to lung cancer and lung disease) in 1992, it was at moderate or high levels for 1,500 hours a year. Now, it's 20 times lower, which isn't perfect but it's a lot better. Progress also continues with the move to hybrid and pure electric vehicles. Health the long-term picture is clear: over the past 100 years, child mortality has fallen from one in four deaths before age 5 to less than one in 200. Again, this is a 20-fold improvement.
