Reader for these COVID-19 times
SLOW DOWN. LISTEN. WITNESS. UNLEARN…
CUHF in these COVID-19 times
The coronavirus pandemic is transforming our human world in almost every dimension.
As we live into this unprecedented time of threat, loss and uncertainty, many writers, thinkers and activists are considering how the pandemic relates to the larger planetary threats of climate and environmental collapse.
Through the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, we reckon with the climate crisis and what it asks of us. Many of the essays included here address that challenge as interwoven with, and amplified by, the pandemic.
What is COVID revealing? Who are we now, and where might we go from here?
With this collection we invite you to pause, reflect and consider what is becoming possible.
The readings are in chronological order by publication date.
Why read this?
George Prochnik
An eloquent essay bringing voices from 1832 to speak urgently to us today…
Beth Gardiner & Elizabeth Sawin
Promising strategies solving big problems in combination…
Deena Metzger
Fertile lessons in the passages through illness and death…
Meehan Crist
Fateful political choices at this global inflection point…
Roger Cohen
A “mystic murmuring voice” pleading for decency
— before it’s too late…
Aisha S. Ahmad
We can learn from a great teacher—calamity– to give ourselves a break…
Vijay Kolinjivadi
Warnings from abroad on the predations of neo-liberalism…
John Bailes
Embracing grief
as a source of wisdom…
Jeremy Lent
What we must do now
to secure a future of “sustainable flourishing”…
Marina Koren
Confirming our impression
that the natural world feels different now…
Arundhati Roy
From India a brilliant writer imagines “another world”…
Rebecca Burgess
An ecologically- and economically-sustainable production system…
Rebecca Solnit
Profound insights
into how disasters change us, and our world…
Kate Brown
A scientist’s lyrical musings on the microbial web in which we swim together…
Charles Yu
Clearing away dangerous illusions of separateness
and safety…
Jane Goodall
A 60-year perspective
on the kinship of humans and other animals…
Emily Witt
An inside look at the
awakening of an iconic
climate change activist…
William E. Rees
The alarming consequences
of rising population and consumption…
David Wallace-Wells
A harrowing projection of pandemics to come …
Sherri Mitchell
Native American wisdom
on the origins and demands of the new virus…
Achille Mbembe
The Universal Right to Breathe
Mary Evelyn Tucker & John Grim
We need a new ethics
that integrates ecology,
justice, and peace…
David Korten
A compact and compelling
call for the U.S. to correct course now…
L. Rafael Reif
How the lessons of COVID can help heal a “fevered planet”…
Kathleen Dean Moore
Years that Ask Questions,
Years that Answer Them
Kim Stanley Robinson
A science fiction giant
on the urgency of the lessons COVID has on offer…
William Powers & Helena Norberg-Hodge
A life of wiser and happier alternatives to globalization…
Petra Lentz-Snow
Can there be sanctuary akin to a global vision quest during a pandemic?…
Adrian Villaseñor-Galarza
Finding the refuge we need at this time of transition…
Gretel Ehrlich
When we all hold our
breath together, what do we see, and know?…
Kathleen Dean Moore
Living Like Birds
Rob Hopkins
“The Sun will Never Shine as it Does Today” – Some Reflections from Lockdown
Henry Wismayer
A travel writer contemplates a less mobile future
Sonia Shah
It’s Time to Tell a New Story About Coronavirus—Our Lives Depend on It
Bill McKibben
130 Degrees
