NEW YORK – The year 2020 was a turbulent one, with the COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide economic reversals, widespread climate disasters, pervasive social unrest, and even US President Donald Trump’s phony allegations of electoral fraud masses and calls among his supporters for martial law. . And yet, despite the serious news, some powerful reasons for optimism came during the year as well. In the coming year, we can lay the foundations for a new era of sustainable development, peace and cooperation.
The first reason for optimism was the success of many countries in stopping COVID-19. Countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region, as culturally and politically diverse as Australia, China, South Korea, Laos, New Zealand and Vietnam, used effective public health strategies to contain the pandemic. So, too, did some countries in other regions, including in sub-Saharan Africa. While the catastrophic flaws of the pandemic response in the United States and Europe dominate the headlines, the successes in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere show us how the combination of good governance, responsible citizenship, and resolving evidence-based policies. major and urgent challenges.
The second reason for optimism is the arrival of new vaccines, which are not only a source of great hope for saving lives and preventing the virus, but also an indication of the power of modern science to deliver technological advances in record time. The development of the vaccine was an example of the “missionary approach” of targeting research and development in a public-private effort. The same missionary approach should be used to address other global challenges, such as promoting renewable energy, sustainable farming, and biodiversity conservation.
The third reason for optimism is that Trump was decisively defeated in the November election. Like many past and present demagogues, Trump managed to generate a broad public following with the backing of mass propaganda, especially Fox News by Rupert Murdoch. And yet, enough of the public saw through the lies and the cervix to enable the United States to make a fresh start after Trump’s disastrous reign of immaturity, hatred, and lies.
Trump’s ignorance and lies contributed to more than 330,000 U.S. deaths from COVID-19 in 2020, about a quarter of the world’s deaths from the virus, even though the United States is only 4% of the world’s population. Trump’s catastrophic abuse of COVID-19 eventually led to his defeat in the election, but even then Trump tried to maintain power by making blatant and delusional allegations about widespread voter fraud. Fortunately, the public and US institutions – mayors, governors, state legislatures, courts and the army – resisted Trump’s authoritarian impulses, as will President-elect Joe Biden, a decent, honorable and reasonable man, be inaugurated soon.
The fourth reason for optimism is the United Nations’ strong performance, despite powerful headwinds in 2020. The United Nations got its existence 75 years ago by America’s greatest president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as a bulwark against future wars. It protects three pillars of multilateralism: peace, human rights, and sustainable development. In 2020, he performed outstandingly on all three fronts, despite the provocations by the Trump administration.
United Nations agencies today are led by men and women of great skill and integrity, and Secretary General António Guterres has guided the organization with enormous skill and vision in what has been the most difficult year since its inception. In 2021, the United Nations will hold several critical global agitations – on oceans, biodiversity, food systems, and climate – that together can lay the foundations for decades of global cooperation on sustainable development.
The fifth reason for optimism is the digital revolution, the unrivaled main character of the global pandemic response. Online activities kept the world functioning. Within weeks, businesses, schools, finance, government, commerce, payments, healthcare providers, and the UN system online at rate, scope, and depth became inconceivable until that point. The digital technologies played a direct role in fighting the epidemic, providing information, monitoring disease transmission patterns, and providing numerous health system services.
Clearly, the new digital world has not been a spontaneous paradise. Sadly, half of the world still lacks Internet access. As a result, the rapid movement of work, school, social life, commerce, and entertainment to online platforms fueled dramatic inequalities between the Internet and non-important ones. In addition, digital technologies have led to other new and serious social evils, including large-scale hacking, fake news, cyber warfare, and unnecessary surveillance by governments and private companies.
The two faces of the digital age, positive and negative, exemplify the situation facing us in many directions. We can be optimistic knowing that the world’s leading technologies and scientific knowledge enable us to solve pressing global problems. And yet, we must also be vigilant to prevent the forces of greed, ignorance and hatred from hijacking the new technologies for their brutal purposes.
Ancient Greek philosophers believed that politics and ethics must go hand in hand. Aristotle wrote two of his masterpieces, Nicomachean Ethics and The Politics, as companion studies, the first as a guide to human happiness and the latter as a guide to how politics can promote happiness in the Greek city-state (the polis).
In our time, Pope Francis has presented two great encyclopedias, Laudato si ‘in 2015 and Fratelli tutti in 2020, to show how ethics can help lead the world to environmental sustainability and global peace. The new encyclopedia offers a profound description of how we can reach beyond our own families, communities and countries to build dialogue and trust around the world.
So let’s go into 2021 with real but cautious optimism. Let us decide to extend the public health successes of the Asia-Pacific region and the new vaccines developed in the US, Europe, Russia and China for the benefit of the whole world. Let us decide to put aside the hatreds that have undermined global cooperation, and join in overcoming the inequality, poverty, exclusion, and environmental destruction that threaten the world. Let us double our support to the United Nations, to build a future based on peace, human rights and sustainable development. And for those in the US, let us begin to heal a wounded and divided nation.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2020.
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