COP15

For these societies, the land is alive, a dynamic force to be embraced and transformed by the human imagination. Reciprocity, as opposed to extraction, is the norm.

WADE DAVIS

COP15, a United Nations climate conference in Montreal.

Wade Davis is the B.C. Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk and a professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia. This essay was written with contributions from Cristian Samper, managing director and leader of nature solutions at the Bezos Earth Fund.

As the world gathers in Montreal for COP15 (the UN Biodiversity Conference), two renowned scientists, godfathers of conservation biology, will for the first time be attending in spirit alone. Tom Lovejoy, who in 1980 coined the term “biodiversity,” passed away last year on Christmas Day. Edward O. Wilson, whose impact on biology can only be compared to that of Charles Darwin, slipped away the following day. The blow to science brought to mind the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, American founding fathers who both died on the Fourth of July in 1826. Lovejoy and Wilson had that kind of stature. They were friends and mentors to an entire generation of field biologists and plant explorers, all inspired by the examples they set as scientists, environmental advocates and activists who worked to protect the miracle of biological life, in every manifestation of its glory.

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Original article on Rolling Stone here.

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Never in our lives have we experienced such a global phenomenon. For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science.

In a single season, civilization has been brought low by a microscopic parasite 10,000 times smaller than a grain of salt. COVID-19 attacks our physical bodies, but also the cultural foundations of our lives, the toolbox of community and connectivity that is for the human what claws and teeth represent to the tiger.

Our interventions to date have largely focused on mitigating the rate of spread, flattening the curve of morbidity. There is no treatment at hand, and no certainty of a vaccine on the near horizon. The fastest vaccine ever developed was for mumps. It took four years. COVID-19 killed 100,000 Americans in four months. There is some evidence that natural infection may not imply immunity, leaving some to question how effective a vaccine will be, even assuming one can be found. And it must be safe. If the global population is to be immunized, lethal complications in just one person in a thousand would imply the death of millions.

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