What will it take to change our behaviour? This pandemic is merely a wake up call for our dying planet. Is this true and do we care?

Most measurements of our success are by the living standards of the economically rich. It is easy to see the chronic effects economically of the virus on trade, governance, health, labour, technology to name a few – and to consider where the balance of risk and opportunity may come out. It offers decision-makers a comprehensive picture of expected long-term changes, and inspiration to leverage the opportunities this crisis offers to improve the state of the world. Yet this pandemic is just one pestilence effecting our world at this time. About 150,000 people die in the world every day. By far the biggest killer is cardiovascular disease killing around 49,000 people each day. Corvid Virus so far has peaked at about 7,500 per day.

However the ice is melting, the fires are raging, the virus is screwing with the economy (oh we care!) but relatively speaking not killing as many people as Mr. Xi or Mr. Assad or the Taliban, or the many terrorists who cut throats, murder babies in their cots, or swindle the poor so that they die of thirst (4,300 per day), or for the want of a mosquito net. (e.g. 1,600 per day) Does anybody care?

Does anybody care that the lungs of the world are being cut down and burned with abandon each and every day in Borneo Brazil and Columbia and lots of other places too.. Does anybody care?

The planet is getting hotter, from Sydney to Sokato, from Carlisle to Columbia, floods, hurricanes, droughts and pestilence increase every year, Do we care?

One of the great reforms must be the growth and investment in IT and Platform enterprises. ” Platform Network effects are present when the value of a solution rises in proportion to the number of users that make use of that solution.  So, for example, a telephone is worthless if no one else uses them.  But additionally, the more users, the more people that can be contacted using a telephone, the more value that telephone has. In short, the value is not just in the machinery, it is in the network. They are in short ‘clean’ by nature.

The immense difference between non platform and platform enterprises is that for the most part it is heavily dependant on internet technology. The consequences are both wondrously beneficial but also radically different. One can see the simplest of massive change in retail and travel to name but a very small sample. Education must react to be up with these changes otherwise many will be swept away as the failed detritus of change. It is the platform enterprises that will offer the biggest employment opportunities in the future, of this we already have many examples in Silicon Valley.

As far as the planet is concerned we all are aware of the crisis that unfolds around us. Will we worry about restoring the status quo more than creating responsive change? Our race has a very poor track record, we have pillaged the planet, now we have been frightened by this contagion, but do we care enough to respond positively?