Prof. Wolfgang argues that climate change, not the virus will be the challenge for the coming decades. The head of COTRI expects the end of the pandemic in 2022 or else…
The Year of 2021 obviously belied expectations, a year of never-ending disappointment in the hope for an imminent end to the nightmare. All the yearning for business and for hugs remained unfulfilled around the world, and in the Asia-Pacific region the Zero-case policies of the governments of China, Australia and New Zealand added insult to injury.
The Year of 2022 will see the end of the pandemic. It simply cannot develop in any other way or else mankind will go mad.
Some colleagues already lost their nerves and declared the end of tourism, the end of mobility even.
But to keep things in perspective:
More than five million human beings have died from Covid-19, which is awful and heart-breaking. However, more than 30 million died in the Great Famine at the end of the 1950s in China alone; the Second World War ended the lives of at least 70 million people prematurely, most of them young.
There is no reason to believe that the pandemic will in the long run stop people from travelling, from mobility, or from gaming.
The Year of 2022 will, however, see again unprecedented floods and droughts, record-breaking heat waves and snow storms, reminding us that the main challenge for the coming decades is not the virus, but the unstoppable climate change.
Looking realistically at the non-linear climate change processes which have already been triggered as of today, it seems inevitable that the vast majority of all human beings born after the year 2000 will die not from natural causes, but prematurely from a lack of clean water and clean air, from extreme weather events, from diseases connected to climate change or from violent conflicts between and inside countries over scarce resources and forced migration.
It can be expected that it will become clearer in the Year 2022 to the “Greta” generation that their demand of the politicians to “do something” is right, but comes at least ten years too late.
One of the big questions of the year will therefore be how, especially younger people, will react when they finally realize that the Titanic has already hit the iceberg, with denial, suicide cults, extreme hedonism, cocooning and ncreased competitiveness trying to belong to the minority of survivors.
The motto of the Year 2022 will be the same as is written in invisible paint over the entrance to any casino in the world:
Carpe Diem!
