Reimagining normal

20 April 2020

As we attempt to plot a path through the horrors of coronavirus lockdown it is hard to imagine a world beyond.

Hours tick by, days roll into one and counting the daily death toll becomes part of a grim routine. There is talk of an end to the lockdown but the truth, we all know deep down, is that a return to the normal we once knew is so far away as to be almost irrelevant.

Besides, what was normal anyway? Normal, for many, was jumping in the car to drive a mile up the road when walking would so easily have sufficed.

Normal, for others, was eating steak for dinner three times a week when pasta or rice would have done them, and the planet, so much less harm.

Normal, for others, was jumping on a flight after breakfast for a meeting overseas before jumping on another to go straight to to the office in time for the next board meeting. Or daily commuting on packed trains to an office where less was achieved than if we'd worked from home. Showing face, for face's sake, was normal.

For others, normal was leaving the car engine running while we ran into the nearest convenience store to buy a bag of avocados grown in Mexico for our mid-winter salad.

Normal, was eating lamb in Spring flown thousands of miles from New Zealand as we watched our own lambs grazing in the field up the road.

Normal, many would argue, was what got us into this mess in the first place.

Many intelligent and progressive thinkers have been arguing for decades we need to reimagine what normal is.

Normal could be sourcing more locally, travelling less frequently, consuming more considerately.

We can use this time to crave a return to the old normal or we can use it to reimagine a future when normal is sensible, normal is selfless and normal is considerate. In so many ways, the future of our species depends on it.

And all the while we bask in beautiful clean air under a sun which is set to present us with the hottest UK April for 361 years.

The coronavirus is our clear and present threat to mankind but the climate emergency has not and will not go away without radical action. A new normal, if you will.

We can carry on as we were after the pandemic passes and ignore the climate warnings, just as we ignored the warnings about the imminent threat of a global pandemic.

We can carry on after the pandemic passes and return to our old normal. The temptation to hit the carbon consumption overdrive will be huge as we reach for every lever, however crass and short-sighted, to kick start the economy.

But we must not return to the old normal.

For any good to come out of this horror, a new normal must be envisaged. A brighter, cleaner future demanded. A new normal where needless travel becomes taboo, needless consumption is routinely rejected and seasonal, locally-grown produce demanded at every turn.

Truly, the new normal could be better for us all. 

Written by Sam Peters, founding partner at Planted