An open letter from writers, artists and scientists argues that there’s no “back to normal.”
Even as local leaders start to talk about re-opening businesses, an open letter signed by artists, writers, and scientists around the world asserts that there is no “going back to normal” beyond the coronavirus pandemic.
Anne Carson, Naomi Klein, and Michael Ondaatje are among the signatories of the letter, which was originally published in Le Monde this week. Barbra Streisand, Juliette Binoche, and Robert De Niro also signed it, as did Novel laureates in chemistry, physics, and medicine, writing that the pandemic provides an opportunity to look more closely at the systemic destruction of the environment:
Consumerism has led us to deny our own lives: that of plants, that of animals and that of a large number of humans. Pollution, global warming and the destruction of natural spaces lead the world to a breaking point. For these reasons, added to an increasing social inequality, it seems unthinkable to us “to return to normality”.
[h/t France24]
