Happy New Year 2022!

If you also thought 2020 was the worse year ever¹, you could be in for a surprise in 2021, but there is hope.

If corona taught me anything was “don’t hope, but be and act”.

Health

This year will definitely be remembered as the year of the corona virus pandemic, which has monopolized public and media attention and by now has officially killed almost two millions people². While some people smarter have warned³ for some time about the dangers of a global pandemic, this past year has clearly shown that we were not prepared to handle such an event, physically or economically - to some extent we still aren’t, and people have the habit to forget rapidly bad experiences. The new UK corona virus strain⁴ might put an extra stress on an already stretched medical system in the coming months.

There is hope with the vaccines, which thanks to science have been developed in record time. But, until a good percentage of the population (like 70%) gets vaccinated (not likely very soon due to lack of infrastructure for the “high tech” ones⁵, the unknowns of the “cheaper” ones⁶ and vaccine skepticism), the disease might have already run its course, and (hopefully) might become just a common cold⁷, which by the way we might not catch this year thanks to COVID-19⁸.

Until then, follow the official recommendations⁹ and stay in shape.

Environment

If ecosystems degraded at an unprecedented rate in 2019¹⁰, well, corona did not stop the trend of humans exploiting and destroying nature¹¹. I mean look - Stihl, the chainsaw manufacturer, is posting record business with double digit growth this year¹².

And, guess what will happen once this corona pandemic is over? There will be a blow off in traveling and consumption, to recover from this “lost” year. This will likely bring the next pandemic upon us sooner, than later¹³.

We need not only to stop the accelerated destruction of our environment, but restore damaged systems. There are solutions. Watch David Attenborough’s “A Life on Our Planet” on Netflix to get some ideas.

Global warming

Global warming, still in a good place, did not get scared by COVID-19¹⁴ either. Greenhouse concentrations, a direct consequence of human activity, reached new highs:

Greenhouse gases concentrations

The solution is simple and at hand - (much) less of everything is more¹⁵. But, tell that to Joe after this year of “deprivation”.

Economy

Worry about the economy

While many have suffered from job loss and salary cuts during this pandemic year, the richest have become even richer¹⁶. Primarily, thanks to central banks and governments, who have pumped liquidity, literally trillions¹⁷, into the markets trying to prop up a consumerism and debt based system. A system, that might lead us into environmental oblivion, unless it destroys itself beforehand.

The governments’ interventions might have offered a buffer to affected economic branches, but what happens when they will end? They won’t, we are addicted, and they will “print”¹⁸ and prefer taking the “easier” exit via inflation, rather than acknowledging an unsustainable system. This is somehow already priced in, in assets like Gold¹⁹, Bitcoin²⁰ and lumber²¹, or stocks which have reached all time highs this past year, in the worse economic crash ever. The trend is likely to continue, with a pinch of volatility.

Boy, one has to wonder how crippled our financial system is, to basically having to hedge it with assets like bitcoin²² or gold, with such a high cost for the environment…

The mantra here - “more, more, more”. The markets are cheering up along the way.

Conclusion

We have global issues, which require global interventions (boy, I might be turning into a globalist), but there are divergent interests as there are people on this planet. So buckle up for 2021, we could be in for a ride.

References

1. https://time.com/5917394/2020-in-review/ ↩

2. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ ↩

3. https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=en ↩

4. https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/12/24/new-coronavirus-strain-is-56-more-infectious-scientists-estimate/ ↩

5. https://www.vox.com/21552934/moderna-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-biontech-coronavirus-cold-chain ↩

6. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03504-w ↩

7. https://www.smh.com.au/national/is-the-coronavirus-getting-less-deadly-or-is-treatment-getting-better-20201110-p56de7.html ↩

8. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03519-3 ↩

9. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public ↩

10. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/ ↩

11. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/10/humans-exploiting-and-destroying-nature-on-unprecedented-scale-report-aoe ↩

12. https://pledgetimes.com/chainsaw-manufacturer-stihl-achieves-record-sales-in-2020/ ↩

13. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200629090009.htm ↩

14. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/climate-change-environment-earth-temperature-global-warming-heat/ ↩

15. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/cities-climate-impact-consume-less/ ↩

16. https://www.allianz.com/en/press/news/studies/200923_Allianz-global-wealth-report-2020-year-of-the-rich.html ↩

17. https://blogs.imf.org/2020/05/20/tracking-the-9-trillion-global-fiscal-support-to-fight-covid-19/ ↩

18. https://www.investopedia.com/fed-reveals-new-attitude-toward-inflation-in-major-policy-shift-5076071 ↩

19. https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html ↩

20. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/ ↩

21. https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/commodities/lbs ↩

22. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/after-recent-price-spike-the-energy-to-produce-bitcoin-could-power-a-country-of-more-than-200-million-people-11609244670 ↩