This might be tone-deaf and uncompassionate, given what many people are facing now and in the near future.

Everyone is making huge efforts, shutting down the economy, losing jobs, feeling the urgency of national and global solidarity, or even getting angry and pointing fingers, in order to try to prevent an unknown number of millions human deaths that may occur due to the COVID-19 virus. 

Meanwhile, every year, 1.35 million people are killed in traffic accidents, and 20-50 million more people are injured. 

4.2 million premature deaths occur every year due to air pollution, from vehicles, construction, and industry.

And most people seem to consider this normal, because we are more accustomed to dying this way than we are from a virus. 

Not always. In the 1970’s Dutch people, seeing the death toll mounting, took to the streets with the slogan STOP THE CHILD MURDERS. They convinced their government to invest in a permanent, safe infrastructure for bicyclists which is still maintained and continues to save many lives every year. 

Some version of this has happened many times in the past. 
In the US, people worked together over decades to develop and enact the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the Endangered Species Act, all of which are hugely influential pieces of legislation that make people and the environment healthier, every day. 

In 1987, Governments cooperated internationally to create the rigorous emissions limits of the Montreal Protocol, and effectively stopped the ozone destruction crisis.

These successes, and this virus, have shown us that change is possible, when people wake up to the problem and work together to create a solution.

Now, we are waking up to the fact that our continued life as usual, extracting, burning, driving, flying, heating, cooling, producing and consuming, has created a climate emergency that will continue to destroy many more millions of human lives through extreme weather events and rising sea levels.

And EVERY DAY, an estimated 150-200 ENTIRE SPECIES of non-human life are wiped out, extinct, forever, due to our continued life as usual.

What can we do to rebuild our economy differently, starting now, so that we NEVER go back to life as usual?