{"id":5070,"date":"2020-06-17T13:29:25","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T13:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/?p=5070"},"modified":"2020-07-05T13:08:23","modified_gmt":"2020-07-05T13:08:23","slug":"flattening-the-human-curve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/en\/flattening-the-human-curve\/","title":{"rendered":"Flattening the Human Curve"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Steven Klein – 17.6.2020  <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

If there is one thing we have learned from this coronavirus pandemic it is the importance of flattening the curve. What most of us don\u2019t realize, though, is that flattening the curve works both ways. Just as we are extending the life of the coronavirus consciously by social distancing, coronavirus is indirectly extending the life of humanity by causing us to cut down pollution-inducing activities and greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we humans love to have stories about fighting wars\nagainst our enemies, coronavirus is not one of them. It is simply doing the\nsame job every living organism on this planet does, which is to survive and\nreproduce. It doesn\u2019t mean to kill its human hosts \u2013 in fact, doing so goes\nagainst its self-interest to survive. Then again, coronavirus doesn\u2019t have the\ncapacity to regulate its activity. Otherwise, it would engage in social\ndistancing in order to avoid reproducing so much lest it overwhelm its host. It\nwould thus flatten the curve; it might not reach its maximum capacity, but it\nwould survive longer as a species unto itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As sentient beings, we humans can make choices about our\nbehavior. When it comes to coronavirus, we have voluntarily stayed at home and\ntanked our economies in the name of survival. But that ability to make\nconscious decisions is a two-edged sword. We can imagine stories of our\ninvulnerability. That ability allows us to deny the folly of not flattening the\ncurve when doing so harms our perceived self-interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine if the coronavirus had a president of a large nation as its advocate. If you tried to tell him that coronavirus particles around the world should slow down, he\u2019d tell you, \u201cNo way, we\u2019re making coronavirus great again.\u201d He\u2019d boast how we\u2019ve got some 2,000,000 active cases, \u201can all-time record.\u201d And what about the places where the virus seems to be disappearing? \u201cFake news.\u201d Yet we know that as thriving as coronavirus is with no end in sight, this pandemic will end badly for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider, thus, human beings as the coronavirus of Planet\nEarth. We mean no harm. We mostly want to grow and thrive, but in so doing we\nare slowly using up the planet\u2019s resources. Eventually, we will kill our host,\nwe just don\u2019t know when. The longer we can spread out the exhaustion of those\nresources, the longer we can keep civilization going as we would like it to be.\nThe problem is that Earth cannot engage in social distancing in order to\nflatten the curve for us. We have to do it ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are our options? The most popular story we like to believe is that we can use innovative technologies like sustainable energy resources to avoid a catastrophic end. That is certainly a worthy endeavor but ultimately limited. Some solutions like bio-fuels have turned out to be as harmful if not more so than fossil fuels, and even renewables like solar and wind energy leave a substantial carbon footprint in order to construct the panels and turbines to generate power. Even recycling can be problematic, as multiple news reports have revealed, with a lot of \u201crecycled\u201d garbage ending up in toxic dumps in southeast Asia<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also face the dilemma that developing countries want the\nright to raise the standard of living so they can close the economic gap\nbetween them and the developed world. Doing so will necessarily stretch the\nworld\u2019s resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ultimate albeit less satisfying answer is to reduce our\nimpact \u2013 buying less, traveling less and slowing population growth. As Alon Tal\npoints out in \u201cThe Land is Full,\u201d we should not be measuring the carrying\ncapacity of a country, or this world, in terms of how many people can be\nsustained within it, but rather how many can be sustained while maintaining an\nacceptable level of quality of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that addressing overpopulation is the only effective way to flatten the curve when it comes to sustaining humanity on earth is an inconvenient truth that only people who believe that a messiah will save us can deny. It is hard to accept this fact because it requires looking not within our own lifetimes or even one generation down the line but several generations. Technology does push the date back of when we will run out of resources, but if we don\u2019t plan ahead the crisis will hit us like the coronavirus on a scale that will make the coronavirus look like a little sniffle. That day is certainly coming faster than we think \u2013 we are in danger of running out of fish stocks and rain forests within a century<\/a>. Global warming will create environmental refugees within decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning to flatten our own curve is truly the most important lesson we can take away from this pandemic.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Steven Klein is a senior editor at Haaretz English Edition as well as an instructor at Tel Aviv Unversity's International Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation and at Ben-Gurion University's Overseas Student Program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Steven Klein – 17.6.2020 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5071,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":""},"categories":[61,60,77],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5070"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5070"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5466,"href":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5070\/revisions\/5466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/population.org.il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}