Post-pandemic normal conditions: a new socioenvironmental normal condition or farewell to normal conditions?

Abstract

Once Covid-19 pandemic established among us, the great collective expectation is about the return to normal pre-pandemic conditions. This assay questions the concept of ‘normality’ related to the context where high morbidity-mortality virus emerge out, showing that pre-pandemic normal conditions, have worst and overwhelming socio-environmental indicators than Covid-19 reports, daily supplied by global mass media in real time. We offer evidences that suggest that the sine qua non principle of economic growth, as indisputable driver of development, and even more, of the capitalist model, is metabolically unsustainable, due to the astonishing demands of energy and goods from nature, beyond its own capacity. Pandemics are not the only fatal consequences of ecological destruction, and by no means among the worst. They are just a symptom of the crisis of the development model, which the sustainable development pretends to relieve, ignoring the pathology that originated it. Due to this fact, we sustain that a new normal conditions is required to be created, truly different to pre-pandemic conditions, and that demand sassessing the model’s principles. We invite the scientific society for an urgent, inclusive and diverse reflection, willing to recognize other perspectives and knowledge, that could offer alternatives ways to coexist with nature.