That everything just becomes "normal" again.
But what was this normal? Where has this normal got us? And didn't we want to change it anyway? Isn't that why this column exists? Have we finally reached the point - in terms of our economic system and of course not in terms of the suffering that the pandemic has caused in many places - where we can fervently sing along to the REM song "It's the end of the world as we know it"? Because corona is not stopping climate change. The German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina, agrees in its "Third ad hoc statement: Coronavirus pandemic - Overcoming the crisis sustainably": "In view of the deep scars that the coronavirus crisis will leave behind, but above all because of the climate and biodiversity crisis, which is at least as threatening, there cannot simply be a restoration of the previous status." According to Leopoldina, it is important to learn from the experience of the pandemic and, above all, to keep reminding ourselves that an increase in population, urbanization, global mobility, the destruction and decline in the resilience of ecosystems and climate change itself contribute significantly to the outbreak of epidemics and pandemics.
