"In this sense, one can almost be grateful to the coronavirus: Nothing contributes to greenhouse gas reduction more than the epidemic. Airlines are cutting back on connections in series, China has cut back on energy-intensive production and consumption is falling worldwide. The International Energy Agency assumes that oil consumption will decline this year for the first time since 2009. The fall in the price of oil is clear evidence of this. On Monday there was even an actual price shock. Not only because demand is falling, but also because the supply side - especially the exporting countries Russia and Saudi Arabia - was unable to agree on production restrictions. That this will now lead to more consumption is not likely to happen as long as the virus continues to spread." (...)
Source (in German): Das Virus und die Wirtschaft (woz.ch)
WOZ-200312-Das-Virus-und-die-Wirtschaft.pdf (277.09 kb)
Further links regarding Co-vid-19:
>Coronavirus: Das wissen wir – und das nicht (quarks.de)
>2003-Monde-dipl_Woher-kommt-das-Co-vid-19.pdf (1.25 mb)
We "breed" pathogens - Wir "züchten" Erreger
(...) Never before in history have people lived in such a controlled environment as today in the richest countries. Never before have they spent so much time in interiors, vehicles and other man-made constructions. For Swiss city dwellers (StadtbewohnerInnen), the fact that Homo sapiens is part of the ecosystems is more theory than lived experience. It sounds romantic. But it also applies in the negative: Every body forms an ecosystem with its microorganisms and viruses that is constantly changing (see WOZ No. 5/2020). They are vital - but some of them can also kill us. And we influence, even breed our pathogens in a direction that increasingly creates problems. This began more than 10 000 years ago. (...)
(...) Today, the "breeding" of pathogens continues at a high pace: mass livestock farming and cities with millions of inhabitants concentrate many more bacteria and viruses in a confined space. This accelerates their evolution enormously. The same applies to the far too broad and careless use of antibiotics in human medicine and factory farming since the Second World War. According to the medical magazine "The Lancet", 33,000 people in Europe alone will have died in 2015 from multi-resistant bacteria against which antibiotics are not effective. Nevertheless, Novartis intends to withdraw from antibiotics research. If development continues at this pace, even simple inflammations and simple operations will become a deadly risk - as they were before the discovery of penicillin.
To the full articles and links in German:
>WOZ-200305-Nicht-alle-sind-gleich-verletzlich.pdf (360.97 kb)
>WOZ-200105-Sind-wir-zu-viele_Biodiversity.pdf (479.04 kb)