“Coal, cars, cash and trees.”
James Lovelock, at 102, says the Covid experience may have been the planet’s ecosystem speaking. “Gaia will try harder next time with something even nastier,” he warns.
New York City, like many municipalities around the world, enacted a vaccine mandate for city employees. If the pandemic is going to end, this is how it can happen, by getting everyone vaccinated. In the United States, where anti-vax runs deep, the push-back against mandates has been strong. Five percent of New York’s workers have gone out on strike. The Big Apple will somehow manage with just the remaining 95 percent.
A judge in Chicago said the Windy City’s vax ordinance needs to be treated like a labor dispute and sent it to arbitration, effectively delaying city employee vaccinations until next year.
The reason New York’s mandates have succeeded where others have failed was likely because it was hit first and hardest when the virus arrived. It did not require a nastier lesson. Hospital ICUs overflowed. There were shortages of protective gear. The National Guard was mobilized to assist. Schools were closed and people were locked into their homes. The fright was palpable.
If you ask someone who lived in a town that was destroyed by wildfire or flood in 2021 whether they think there should be a carbon…