It has been said often that the pandemic caused people to re-evaluate their lives, their jobs, where they lived, what was important to them. But as we seem to be emerging from its worst effects, I can say that over the last two years the pandemic did not affect us in the ways stated. I feel fortunate that its main effects here were a heightened concern for my own parents who we were nevertheless able to see often, a greater appreciation for the traffic-free streets in lockdown, and no more than a nasty case of covid in early March 2020, followed by what in hindsight was probably long covid. It is curious though, what does cause us to re-evaluate what is important to us. There is a party game question which you can play at any game to quiz your own and your friends' priorities.
It was dental problems though that provoked me to ask myself what six things could you not do without?
Pain throbbed from my upper left jaw, sent currents through the gum and all the teeth on that side. It zigzagged through the left side of my skull, insinuated its way into my left ear, snaked down the side of my neck, shoved a finger up my left nostril. Despite being dosed to the gills with co-codamol and ibuprofen, the pain during the worst spasms was literally blinding. I couldn't see, or rather, couldn't open my eyes, couldn't speak, couldn't think. Life before modern dentistry must have been agonising and not infrequently fatal.
Had I been capable of doing anything but rubbing involuntarily at my face and groaning, modern dentistry would unquestionably have been top of a list of life's must-have's, above, at that moment, even my own children. Children of course are not "things" but a list of essentials without them will nag uneasily at many parents.
The gratitude towards dentists, unusual at other times, naturally extends at such moments to modern medicine. Memories surge forward of when we or our loved ones have been saved or mercifully helped by advances in science.
So, on a list of say, six essentials, three have already almost selected themselves: modern dentistry, modern medicine and our loved ones. Fripperies like mobile phones and the internet drop away, except for their usefulness in instantaneously finding the essential services. The receptionist who understands your plight and finds you a merciful spot in the dentist's chair puts compassion in an easy fourth place. The realities of life begin to be laid bare.
In 2019 the WHO listed heart disease and stroke as the two leading causes of death worldwide. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease came third and lower respiratory infections fourth.
Environment-related deaths (2016) were listed as:
Unintentional injuries (such as road traffic deaths) – 1.7 million deaths annually
Cancers – 1.7 million deaths annually
Chronic respiratory diseases – 1.4 million deaths annually
Diarrhoeal diseases – 846 000 deaths annually
Respiratory infections – 567 000 deaths annually
Modern life is a contributing or leading factor to most of these bar diarrhoeal diseases. Perhaps we should be considering a list not of what we need but a life-saving list of what we should do without: cars, cigarettes, sugar, processed foods, screens that encourage sedentary lifestyles.
Looking at both of the WHO's lists, it is clear that clean air would save many lives. It is in increasingly short supply. It is worth bearing in mind that for the millions who die from respiratory disease, millions more live with chronic, debilitating respiratory conditions. In February 2021 the Guardian reported that "Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year".
So number 5 on my list is clean air. I hope this is set to reverse with the decline of the use of fossil fuels and the rise of electric vehicles. But according to Fortune magazine last year China burnt over 50% of the world's coal in 2020. Despite its "sometime before 2060" net zero pledge, 70% of its electricity last year came from fossil fuels. In contrast, the UK's dependence on coal dropped 93% between 2015 and 2020.
A paramedic walked in to the coffee shop where I was hiding away from the distractions at home. Gratitude washed over me as the pain pulsed on. I had a strong desire to buy his coffee but doubted he'd let me and in the circumstances, I wasn't feeling too talkative. It's too bad you can't zip a pay-it-forward coffee through the ether to the coffee counter when you see someone for whom you'd like to buy a coffee. Then again I guess it would be creepy. The real life equivalent of the dating app 'like' or 'swipe right' would be all a bit too...real. I wondered if the pain was making me think more rationally or less so. I wondered what his six things would be.
As with the short step from dentistry to medicine, the green theme extends easily from air to water. 40% of river pollution comes from industrial agricultural practices such as the use of pesticides and fertiliser, 35% from water companies dumping sewage and 18% from road and urban run-off.
There is also the question of how clean 'clean' water is. The environmentalist and writer Mark Boyle now lives in Ireland by gardening, fishing and foraging and without technology, running water or electricity. In an interview he said: "If I had an environmental flag, there’d be a compost loo in the middle of the flag because I do feel it’s symbolic of the movement. I think the way we go to the loo now is very symptomatic of how we live."
This may not make much sense unless you know that Boyle's big thing is the damaging effect of industrial processes on the world in which we live. When you pause to consider, there is almost no product, no service and very few activities, even the most apparently, in our lives today that are not dependent on these. We go for a walk wearing industrially produced clothing and footwear. Having sex, we use industrially produced contraceptives. Even talking we do under electric lights, in centrally heated houses, in buildings made from industrial materials furnished with industrially produced goods,. Perhaps we have our conversation outside then: on the urban street; on the edge of an intensively farmed field; maybe high on a moor inside an industrially produce tent. Unless you are living like Boyle as a modern Walden, are a survivalist or a medieval re-enactor with skills in self-sufficiency living that life full-time, the industrialised world is all but inescapable
So now, "the way we go to the loo now is very symptomatic of how we live" may start ot make more sense. He expands upon this in his book 'The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology': "We take clean water and defecate in it. To make it clean again we blast it with chemicals. This takes lots of energy & means we drink water that once had shit and now has chemicals in it."
So clean, properly clean water, is my number 6.
The focus of the list is towards the things that help reduce pain, illness and disease in life or which are truly essential to survival. I might have chosen carbohydrate, fat, vitamins and minerals, protein, shelter, warmth, only, the plight of the planet has sharpened the attention to those things we had that are now degrading.
The pandemic pales in significance to the deaths awaiting the word from the climate crisis. As this becomes more obviously inescapable, as wildfires take over countries, as plagues, pestilence, natural disasters and mass migration all promise to hit epic proportions, will the things people start to consider for their list of essentials change or will they still be talking about coffee, computers and car keys?
