What will the long-lasting effect of the pandemic be on our politics? And can we apply anything that we’ve learnt over the last 18 months to our approach to environmental emergency?
The pandemic exposed the risks and weaknesses of the market-driven global system like never before, revealing a critical lack of institutional preparation and failings of the basic apparatuses of state administration.
It also revealed that states could exercise experimental policy and control over the economy when necessary: governments around the world introduced new measures and spent whatever it took to deal with Covid. The US stimulus was the largest on record, the UK government supported 11 million workers with its job retention scheme. It’s hard to ignore this turning point in global economics.
After a period where we’ve seen radical measures, how can we ensure that we continue to support workers in the long-term? And as we think about our response to the climate crisis, what parallels can be drawn with the handling of the pandemic?
Exploring how Covid-19 ravaged the global economy, and where it leaves us now, historian Adam Tooze and political economist Helen Thompson look to the future and explore how we can apply the lessons we’ve learned from the past 18 months to future reforms to our politics and economics – and to our approach to environmental emergency.
