One of them is the Coruna virus ... 10 catastrophic threats facing humanity

I thought about the Mahdi

After only four months, we can say that 2020 made a clear demonstration of the existential and catastrophic risks that threaten the continuity of the human race on the planet.

In its report entitled "Survival and Success in the 21st Century", the Commission on the Human Future reviewed ten potential catastrophic threats to human survival, and the report was published on the "Confidence" website on April 25th.

Founded in 2019, the Human Future Commission is an Australian body that includes academics, thinkers and policy leaders concerned with promoting solutions to the threats facing humanity and the planet.

Catastrophic threats to humankind
The commission's report stated that the Covid-19 virus is only one of the potential catastrophic threats to the survival of humankind, and these ten threats are an inevitable consequence of climate change, including:

Decreased natural resources, especially water, collapse of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity, growth in the human population that is beyond the Earth's absorptive capacity, global warming, and chemical pollution of the Earth system including the atmosphere and oceans.

In addition to the increase in food insecurity and poor food quality, nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, new and untreatable epidemics, the emergence of strong and uncensored new technology, and local and global failure to understand and act preventively about these risks.

The committee's report indicates that our human race's ability to cause collective harm to itself has been accelerating since the mid-twentieth century, and global threats in terms of demographics, information, politics, war, climate, and environmental and technological damage have reached a climax with a completely new level of risk.

So that each of them poses a great threat to human civilization; thus it becomes a "catastrophic threat", or it can cause the extinction of human species; and therefore it is an "existential danger".

This means that many of the existing systems, including economic, food, energy, production, waste, community life and governance systems, must be reassessed and reformed, along with our relationship with the Earth's natural systems.

Future and approach
Despite the catastrophic global threat of the emerging corona virus, its benign effects in reducing carbon pollution as a result of limiting industrial activities, and in shifting human thinking towards increased debate on artificial intelligence, cannot be denied, in addition to the changes in the global security landscape, especially In the face of massive economic transformation.

Hence, we cannot counter this virus without affecting other risks in some way. The committee's report emphasized our need for imagination and creativity and to draw new scenarios for the challenges we face in society and humanity.

Committee members believe that new risks can be expected. For example, if policymakers and government in Australia had spent more time using available data from climatology to understand and imagine potential risks for the summer 2019-2020, it would have been possible to anticipate a catastrophic season like the one that occurred Indeed, Australia would probably be able to better prepare for it.

By analogy, Corona is a new threat, and it would have been better prepared if we prepared the pre-scenario for its possible emergence.

Preparing for the long road
The Commission’s report highlights governments ’failure to address these ten threats that we live in today, and criticizes the shortcomings, especially in the short-term thinking that dominates global politics; which seriously undermines our ability to reduce risks such as climate change. With this, we can begin the positive transformation process from thinking in the short term to the long term.

The committee concluded its report stressing that we live in unprecedented times of catastrophic and existential risks, and that the human future belongs to all of us, and it is necessary to have comprehensive and diverse participatory discussions at the individual and policy levels to assess the behavior of the human race at all levels, and the reflection of our actions today on future generations.