Hello.
A short while ago, we asked our Instagram followers
to send in questions that they would like answered.
Somebody called ced1 asked, will this crisis pandemic
give an even greater push to sustainability
at companies and ESG investing?
And that's a great question.
Because, to be honest, the answer
is sort of hanging in the balance right now.
On the one hand, the magnitude of the crisis
means that governments, and corporate leaders,
and many consumers, too, will be desperate to restart growth
at almost any cost when we begin to come out of the lockdown.
And we're already seeing signs that a country like China
is starting up coal-fired power plants without too much concern
about the environment.
And you're also seeing leaders like President Donald
Trump essentially indicating that it really is growth that
matters now, not anything else.
...to safely get our people back to work.
But there are also some reasons to be cheerful too.
And this crisis has forced us all to recognise that it pays
to listen to scientists.
And that could change attitudes towards the environment.
This crisis has also shown us that we are all
linked into a chain of humanity, which is something we've often
ignored, particularly in the west where it's
been so easy to just close our eyes to the suffering
of the marginalised and excluding
people who aren't like us.
But this crisis has shown us, with Covid-19, that actually,
if the weakest link in the chain breaks, that can affect us all.
And that might actually give more interest to issues
to do with inclusion.
All of these questions are going to become
more and more important when people look to the future,
I think.
This is Gideon Rachman.
And I'm going to try and answer a question from the MIT REI
lab.
And the question is, is it viable to hold
a country at least partially accountable for the pandemic?
And what would the economic consequences of that be?
Now, I think the short answer to that question is probably not.
Most people, even the Chinese government in most moods,
accepts that this came out of China and out of Wuhan.
And here, there is a state in the United States,
Missouri, which has announced its intention, actually
to sue China.
It has said that Missouri businesses have suffered
billions of dollars of losses, that this
is China's responsibility, and that they're going
to go after them in court.
And obviously, if that court case were to succeed,
it would have global implications.
Because it's not just Missouri businesses
that have lost billions.
However, as far as I understand it,
the legal opinion is mainly that it's unlikely that such a court
case will succeed.
There is a legal doctrine called sovereign immunity which
almost always protects nation states from being
pursued in the domestic courts of another country for damages.
So that's been cited by the Chinese.
And perhaps more importantly, most
independent legal scholars, including in the United States,
think that this Missouri case and any other similar cases
would fail on this doctrine of sovereign immunity.
But let's just say for the sake of argument that it succeeded.
That the court case went through,
China was found guilty.
You then have the question of, well,
how do you actually enforce a verdict like that?
It's very, very difficult. The Chinese clearly
are not going to say, oh, fine, and just write a cheque out,
and send it from Beijing.
That's not going to happen.
So do you start trying to seize assets,
for example, Chinese government property
or the assets of state-owned Chinese enterprises?
Well, you could try.
But then I think it's pretty certain that you would then
get retaliation from China, that they would go
after American assets in China.
And you would have an unholy mess.
And an already very tense diplomatic situation
would become even worse.
Sardorbekk1 asks, can anyone know
if this kind of pandemic virus will happen again?
If yes, can we predict when?
Well, I'm afraid the simple, quick answers are yes and no
respectively.
The reason is that almost all new and emerging diseases
in people have come from animals.
And as the world's population has increased
we've had more and more contact with animals.
At the same time, we've been travelling more.
International travel, particularly air travel,
has greatly increased the speed with which a new disease can
take off and transmit worldwide before it can be stamped out.
Will there be another pandemic like this?
There certainly will be.
But I think that the legacy of Covid
may mean that we're much better prepared for it
than we have been this time.
For a start, I'm sure that a global viral surveillance
system will be set up so that people know at once, much
quicker than they did this time, that something bad is happening
and to mobilise against it.
Also, the technology for developing diagnostic tests,
for developing drugs and vaccines
is going to be far more advanced than it
was this time with everyone just scrambling
to get these things together.
So, I'm an optimist.
At least, most of me is optimistic.
I think there will be another viral pandemic
in the 21st century.
But I think this Covid will go down in history as the worst.