JOHN ELLIS
‘The economy can serve a greater vision’

Asked to view this question from an economic angle, I would say it has provided a dark and brutal case study to highlight things we should always have known but often forget.

The first lesson is that when the will exists, we have the technical capacity to control, and hence reshape radically, the economy. The idea that the economy is a relentless machine before which all we can do is bow down and worship is a dangerous and debilitating heresy. Treating consistency as a primary virtue in a politician is also often unhelpful. The economist Keynes (with plenty of Congregational blood from his mother) said that when the facts changed, he changed his mind. However ghastly the case study, Covid-19 teaches us the fundamentally hopeful truth that the economy can be a tool to serve a greater vision, not a roadblock that stymies it.

The new Covid-19 economics has resulted in objectives being achieved: new hospital capacity funded and built; new ventilators designed and produced. But after the first item on the news bulletins we have been taught about some other consequences: the family business destroyed overnight by lockdown; the mental health impacts of new lifestyles. The difficult questions in ethics revolve around the clash between more than one good principle. Protecting physical health has moved top of the list, yet, for human beings made in the image of God, other factors count…

John Ellis is outgoing Treasurer of the Council for World Mission and former Business Ethics Adviser to the Governor of the Bank of England

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JULIUS MBATIA
‘We are interconnected’

There has been much written about the positive environmental side effects of the coronavirus lockdown: cleaner air, carbon pollution slowing, nature thriving and even dolphins swimming in the canals of Venice. Sadly, these gains are likely to only be temporary if we do not change our ways. In some places, we’re already seeing emissions returning to pre-lockdown levels.

But we hang on to the hope that we can apply the lessons of the coronavirus to the climate crisis. Coronavirus has taught us that we live in an interconnected world. A virus which began in a Chinese city affected the whole planet within weeks. In the same way, carbon emissions generated by the rich, polluting nations of the global north contribute to droughts, storms and floods in Africa and other parts of the global south. In the same way, the threat of the coronavirus will only be gone once it’s eradicated everywhere. Climate change is a global problem requiring us all to do our fair share.

The Bank of England Governor, Andrew Bailey, said in a recent article calling for a green economic recovery: You can’t self-isolate from climate change. This, rather than the short-lived emissions drop, is truly how the coronavirus could positively impact the environment…

Julius Mbatia is Climate Change and Governance Project Officer for Christian Aid Kenya