Fareed Zakaria, commenting for CNN, makes a much-needed macro- analysis of current and impending global issues, but with one glaring oversight. His litany of cascading crises fails to mention the looming crisis that makes the coronavirus and economic crises facing us pale by comparison. The pandemic will pass and eventually so will the depression it is already starting to cause.
The climate crisis, however, will remain as an existential threat to all nation states, civilizations, and indeed all life on the planet unless, somehow, against all odds and past experience, international cooperation halts the carbon emissions that are slowly but surely rendering the Earth uninhabitable. That, Fareed, is the biggest picture, the fullest macro-analysis, and you have rightly chastised the US for abandoning its crucial leadership role in fostering the global cooperation that will be needed first to recover from the massive impacts to the global economy caused by he coronavirus pandemic and then to address the social, political, and environmental disruptions due to an increasingly hostile climate. Without a united joint effort, our survival is far from assured.
