COMMENT | Can humanity grow up?

COMMENT | The Covid-19 pandemic underscores just how tightly interwoven humanity has become. A single infected animal somewhere in China set in motion a chain reaction with effects that, nearly a year later, are still reverberating in every corner of the planet.

This should not be particularly surprising. The history of pandemics tracks our unification as a species. The Black Death travelled on new trade routes forged between Europe and Asia in the Middle Ages. Smallpox crossed the Atlantic Ocean with the Europeans, devastating the Americas. And the 1918 influenza pandemic reached six continents in just months, owing to technological advances in moving goods and people. Each time humanity takes bold steps toward deeper integration, disease follows.

This has yielded profound benefits. We pool our knowledge, innovation, and technology. We share in the rich traditions of each other’s cultures. We cooperate across vast distances, working together on projects too great for any individual, or country, to complete on their own – such as eradicating smallpox from the face of the Earth.

But our interconnectedness also brings profound costs. We share not only our greatest knowledge and culture but our greatest risks. We may go decades without seeing it, but our activities have a shadow-cost in risk that eventually comes due. And it is not limited to pandemics. Our newfound ability to share information across the world allows dangerous ...