A VIRAL OPPORTUNITY

A VIRAL OPPORTUNITY

What kind of world do we want on the other side of this crisis?

 
In February 2020, Peter Neill, founder and director of the World Ocean Observatory a piece forWorld Ocean Radioabout agreen swan, a variant concept put forward in 2007 by Nassim Nicholas Taleb who described certain disruptive financial events calledblack swans, with three special characteristics: 
 
  • they are unexpected and rare, 
  • wide-ranging and extreme, and 
  • explicable only after the fact. 
 
The metaphor continues to serve with a new identification of thegreen swan, unique still from the dark species by the prevailing certainty that climate events will continue to materialize in the future; that there is need for ambitious, imperative climate actions in response; and that climate catastrophes are even more serious than systemic financial crises, posing an existential threat to humanity.
 
Green swansare new to scientific classification and they do not bode well for the future.
 
Consider this a viral opportunity. Not a threat — but a provocation to cure.”