That’s a wrap
Issue 82 - 14 December 2021 (4-min read)
With the pandemic still very much in our lives, it is hard to distinguish between 2021 and 2020. Honestly, it seems like we entered an alternate timeline in March 2020 and, since then, time goes both surprisingly fast and agonisingly slow.
Was it really two years ago that we heard of a mysterious disease killing people in China? Were there really dolphins in the Venice canals? Has it only been a handful of months that we started working from home? Have we really lost almost 5.3 million lives to this virus? Did we really hoard vaccines for the rich believing we won’t have to deal with the consequences of the virus spreading among the poor?
The Global Tiller takes a look back at the year that has passed. What did we talk about in the 45 issues we published this year and what themes emerge as we think critically about our collective future?
We started this year on a very real note, acknowledging the grief that overwhelmed us in 2020 and hoped that 2021 would take it easy on all of us. It may have held true for some but certainly not for the world as a collective. We still continue to lose over 5,000 people every day to Covid-19 and unequal distribution deprives a large proportion of the world population from life-saving vaccines.
We feared that the book publishing industry was heading towards a monopoly but some of those fears may be curtailed if the US Department of Justice succeeds in preventing Penguin Random House from acquiring Simon & Schuster.
We also bit into the doughnut economic model — that propagates for an economy that does not rely on GDP as a measure of prosperity — as an answer to the failure of existing economic models to tackle present and future challenges, and were reassured to learn that degrowth is becoming mainstream. In fact, Italian physicist Giorgio Parisi told the parliamentarians at a PreCop26 meeting that "an increase in the GDP is in contrast with the climate".
Fortunately, the Indian farmers who had been protesting since the start of the year against unfair agriculture policies have succeeded in getting the controversial laws repealed. Not so fortunate for Taiwan, who continues to be bullied by China. The latest affront coming from Nicaragua who broke ties with the small island nation only to receive a billion doses of Covid vaccines from China a few days later.
We also had opportunities to talk about developments that are changing the way we live. From being challenged in our ideas of what a family has to look like to how we listen to music, how gene editing is shaping our future selves, if our pet pals are coping well with our disrupted lifestyles, and why gender expectations are restricting parental experiences.
Climate change was and continues to be an overarching theme across all our issues this year and we managed to look at this existential threat from different perspectives: the abundance of plastic in our environment, the futility of transnational organisations, such as the WTO and the G7, in bringing meaningful change, billionaires bidding for post-apocalyptic bunkers in New Zealand, the water crisis around the world, and our comprehensive coverage of the COP26 Climate Summit.
Throughout this quite unique year, we've covered a lot of changes and challenges for our human collective. And if we have gone through and still are in difficult times, we have had many chances to witness the fantastic ability of our kind to adapt, to hope and to help each other. Through our new podcast, Pacific Toks, we met great people from the Pacific region and had the privilege to see how these leaders are willing to step up, to inspire and to get their hands on the ground to do the hard work. The kind of work that creates meaningful change and help us build forward better.
It can be overwhelming to think about the challenges we face but we hope that this newsletter is helping you make sense of what’s happening in the world. We strive to declutter the news for you so that we are well-informed and equipped to create a world that works for each and every one of us.
If you think someone in your circle would also enjoy being a part of our community, please don’t hesitate to share the newsletter with them.
We hope you find opportunities to relax and spend time with your loved ones. We’ll check-in on you in 2022.
Happy holidays!
Hira & Philippe
The Global Tiller team
