The world is, rightly, focused on the current pandemic. However, Dr. Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown invites us to look at the bigger pattern.

“The world’s attention is focused on this pandemic, as it should be,” Foley says. “But we have to remember that there is an underlying pattern to these kinds of events. For examples, we’ve had more severe storms, floods, droughts, and more fires in the last few decades because of climate change. That doesn’t mean we only deal with those individual events. We must look at those events, and the bigger picture that is causing them to occur more frequently.

“The same thing with infectious disease. In the last thirty to forty years, we’ve seen so many new diseases ripping through the human population.

“Many of these diseases come out of our broken ecosystem. They are zoonotic diseases, diseases that jump from animals to people. And that comes from bad agriculture and tearing down ecosystems. Things that normally lay dormant jump into our populations. So, keep our eyes on the long term. We can stop this coronavirus, but we’re going to have another one in a few years if we don’t stop the underlying cause.

“Just like climate change, we can’t just look at one fire. We must look at the pattern of what’s happening. We can’t just look at coronavirus and forget that a lot of these new diseases are becoming common because of our destruction of the world’s ecosystems.”

Dr. Jonathan Foley is a climate and environmental scientist. His work is focused on understanding our changing planet, and finding new solutions to sustain the climate, ecosystems, and natural resources we all depend on. He is the Executive Director of Project Drawdown.