Recently, the ABC (Australia Broadcasting Corporation) News website presented an advertorial article promoting a David Attenborough documentary called The Year Earth Changed, which expounds the positive effect the global slowdown of human economic activity due to the pandemic has had on the natural world. 

If this documentary only references the short-term advantages that the natural world gains from the pandemic, and doesn’t reference the long-term negative effects, then it is misleading, as the long term disadvantages will be much more important than any short- term advantages.  

You may have heard that free, globalised trade enables each country to focus on the products that it does best at making, that is, the products with which it has a comparative advantage.  The international competition to achieve a comparative trade advantage results in a ‘race to the bottom’ of reduced human rights, environmental damage, and disregarded moral values.  How can we fix this?

A few weeks ago there was a spate of articles in the news media about how the coronavirus was helping to save the environment.  The reports generally had a positive flavour, and yet the pandemic will almost certainly be an environmental disaster when, or if, we come through it.