Downsizing Our Economy Could Prevent Future Pandemics

Globalization is the increasing interconnectedness of the countries, cultures, and people of the world. We are so interconnected at this point that it is hard to find out where certain thoughts and practices come from. Our economies are dependent on one another like a Jenga tower, so that if one experiences a shift most others need to adapt. International companies can suck money out of millions of people in several countries for the richest few to take home. Cultures can interact and teach each other amazing things.

Don’t get me wrong; there are so many benefits of globalization that we can feel every day. Lower consumer prices, exposure to different cultures, and access to the newest, coolest technologies around the world. However, there are negatives as well, including modern Western imperialism, international political conflict, exploitation of external labour and tax havens by international corporations, the cloudy origins of climate changing emissions, and the spread of diseases and viruses on an immense scale. 

I have read some articles recently about how the COVID-19 pandemic originated and was spread by our food systems, and the WHO bulletin “Pandemic prevention and unsustainable animal-based consumption” says this specifically relates to the consumption of animal products by humans. However, in the Future Perfect Podcast episode, “How to prevent a factory farmed pandemic,” one of the guests on the show, epidemiologist Martha Nelson, brings up the ways that pigs are moved around the US which increases risks of disease transmission between pigs and then into the human population. This made me think more about the ways that animal movements, including our own human movements, as well as our relationships with each other and other animals, are at the root of disease and virus transmission. 

Animals have always held a place in human interactions. From the European use of livestock to supply humans with food to the Native American interactions with dogs, we have almost always had some form of interaction with animals. As these interactions grew in number of animals, frequency, and physical closeness, the possibilities of transmission from animals to humans grew. The same thing happened when humans began building larger civilizations that had people living closer together and interacting closely more often. When we add in the more recent movement patterns of people and animals around the world, we can see how the spread of disease becomes a larger scale issue. 

Many scholars say that if we want to help the planet and our own health, we need to stop eating animal products or at least dramatically decrease our consumption of them. While I agree that it isn’t good for humans to have a diet heavy in meat, I think that the practice of eating meat is not necessarily the cause of disease transmission or climate change. I think that when we look not at the fact that we interact with animals, and instead look at how we interact with animals and each other, as well as the scale at which we perform these interactions, we can begin to see the real origins. The cause of disease is not that people eat meat; the cause of disease is the interactions with animals and people that occur before and during the production of the food, as well as the movement patterns during which these interactions happen. The cause of climate change is not animals existing; instead, the cause of climate change is the tremendous scale at which we, as humans, do most things nowadays without an equally large balancing method for these practices. This is not only regarding food consumption. It also has to do with transportation, production of material goods, movement of people and animals, and waste. 

If life is not lived in balance of good and bad, the scales tip so that things change. If we produce too much heat trapping gas in too short a time, we are bound to get hotter until we give nature the time to heal. If you produce no heat trapping gas, however, you’re going to get pretty cold. In the past, we lived more in the healthy balancing range of nature. We had smaller civilizations, we had natural population checks, and we didn’t overconsume. I think that instead of completely abolishing capitalism, and ceasing to eat animal products altogether, and going back to separatist social policies, we can find a solution in between the extremes that allows people to continue interacting with one another while helping the planet recover from past and present damage. I think that we could downsize the economy to focus on small businesses and communities instead of focusing on the individual or the global picture. Farms could go back to ethical, small, non-factory operations and supply for those who want the products in that area. We can provide more jobs that are better in quality when we have a greater variety of smaller businesses that are not operating at a global scale out of greed. We can maintain our progressive social state without dramatically changing our economic systems. 

Capitalism itself isn’t bad, and animal products are not bad in themselves. It is the scale that things have grown to with the human population that I think is a bit of an issue. Any big change to a system is bound to have undesirable effects, so why don’t we limit these impacts by starting with small changes? In the future, if those changes don’t work, then you can go make more. Sometimes by saying “This doesn’t work, so let’s just do the opposite”, we could end up in a worse situation or overshooting our needs. If we had an economy based on small businesses, what would you be able to do better without fear of being gobbled up by a dominant corporation? The possibilities are limitless, which means that with more businesses, we have more ideas, motivation, and innovation to get us to sustainability and balance.

Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!