Did we really learn the lessons of 2020?

The pandemic may just prove to be a dress rehearsal for the looming climate change crisis

Replacing the zero at the end of 2020 with a one did not bring about a return to a COVIDfree world. When the calendar flips over to a new year, the only observable impact is on the sale of new calendars. For the rest, we're on our own. No guarantees, no promises.

The year 2020 was not bad for everyone. According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the world's 500 richest people have added a total of $1.8 trillion to their nest eggs since the health crisis began, with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos leading the way. But financial wealth is far from the only thing that matters to human beings. Think of all the parents around the world who are marvelling at the miracle of new life. COVID or not, life goes on.

Think of all the health workers who go home at night, tired to the bone but who know deep inside that they have saved human lives. They won't boast about it, but every day people survive diseases because other people are willing to work on the edge of a precipice.

I'm not trying to sell you on the virtues of 2020. It was not the greatest year in human history. But every cloud, even a viral one, has a silver lining that I would call a “learning opportunity.”

Things have been bad at seniors' residences for a long time, but it took a pandemic to show us how awful it really was. And how we need to make deep and lasting changes not only to our care centres, but to the way the elderly are

Are we going to be ready? Are mitigation plans in place?

viewed in our society.

Our school system, too, suffers from many ailments that the pandemic laid bare: lack of money, lack of personnel, lack of academic ambition and, as COVID has revealed, a lack of the capacity to pivot quickly to online instruction. It also laid bare the digital divide: some families do not have internet connections or even computers.

Mind you, the lack of high-speed internet service in many parts of the country — where I live, halfway between Montreal and Ottawa, getting a connection is a challenge — also stops many students from being able to learn online. Is that normal in Canada in 2021?

This country is lacking in high-speed internet connectivity in rural areas. In November, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an investment of $1.75 billion to improve access to high-speed internet. Why this was not done before is a mystery to me.

The only acceptable excuse is the size of our country. To wire Canada from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast to the Arctic coast is a tad more demanding than connecting, say, Switzerland. But in today's world, good internet connections should be as ubiquitous as phone lines.

These are all serious issues, but let me share with you what's keeping me up at night these days. And, no, it is not the federal government's $1,000 “travel during a pandemic bonus.”

I try to keep my eyes on the horizon, to see what's coming next. All I see are the words “climate change” flashing in neon colours. What if the pandemic was a dress rehearsal for the next catastrophe?

When the virus finally departs, will we still remember the lessons of 2020?

In our despair to return to normality, we might forget that “normal” is an illusion, a temporary state of mind that gets challenged by fate at every turn. All things change, things can go wrong, we have to be prepared to live differently. For awhile, or forever.

Soon enough, climate change will hit us hard. The changes it will demand of us will make lockdown, wearing masks and distance learning look like a walk in the park.

Are we going to be ready? Are mitigation plans in place? Have we started making meaningful change?

I doubt it. We Homo sapiens only learn when it hurts.