“It is worse, much worse, than you think.” This is how journalist David Wallace-Wells opens his 2019 book, The Uninhabitable Earth, about global climate change. This sentence aptly describes the dire circumstances our planet faces now and in the coming years, but it is an equally suitable descriptor for the current and future consequences of the coronavirus pandemic in the wake of political inaction and personal irresponsibility.
This past weekend marked the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ promulgation of his encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home.” To commemorate the event, the Holy Father has called for a “Laudato Si’ Year,” which began on Sunday and will continue through May 14, 2021.
In light of this, I have been thinking a lot about Wallace-Wells’ book and its scientifically grounded pessimism regarding the future of life on what the pope calls “our common home,” especially as we face a global pandemic the likes of which have not been seen in more than a century. Like the impending effects of global climate change in general, the increasing threat and reality of global pandemics are “worse, much worse, than you think.”
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