Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.

As 2022 begins, Covid-19 continues to dominate our lives. It’s now nearly two years since its arrival triggered levels of panic unprecedented in the lifetimes of most of us in the West — isolating people in their homes, shutting down offices, the hospitality and entertainment industries, and most retail outlets. After restrictions were eased over the summer of 2020 and into autumn, a second wave of the pandemic shut society down again for several long and gruelling months at the start of 2021, and, after another easing of restrictions, a third wave — of the Omicron variant — has once more derailed notions of a return to “normality.”

Thankfully, it looks as though this variant, although highly infectious, is far less deadly, although it will still put a strain on overstretched and exhausted health services. In the UK, however, another serious lockdown looks unlikely — not for medical reasons, but because Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces a backbench rebellion that will topple him from power if he once more imposes serious restrictions.

Throughout this period, a far bigger crisis — catastrophic climate change, caused by humanity’s obsession with fossil fuels — has generally been relegated to a secondary position in the considerations of politicians and the media. Activists did a great job of amplifying the concerns of largely ignored climate scientists in the years before Covid hit, but although there was a brief reawakening of interest in climate change in November, when the COP26 climate summit of world leaders took place in Glasgow, it passed as soon as the conference ended, and the Omicron variant took over.

Read the rest of this entry »