"I Want More Than To Return to 'Life as Normal'"—by Susan Pepper

(This essay by my daughter, Susan, is so meaningful I decided to share it on my blog. It ran on-line in today's Cincinnati's Enquirer)

Two important lessons for me through COVID-19: life is indeed fragile AND we are not powerless to make big sweeping change as a culture – one person and one household at a time. These lessons are changing the way I think about the enormous challenges we face with climate change.

The world has “shut down” in a way many of us have never before experienced. Of course, front-line medical workers and others performing essential jobs have probably never felt so stretched or overworked. And while we have just completed about six weeks of staying at home (I’ve lost track), my mind returns to a problem I’ve thought about, worried about and grieved for over half of my life – the incompatibility of our culture and way of life here in America with the viability of the ecosystem and the natural world that is the root of our very existence.

While the government is trying to prepare to get our economy back up and running, I realize that I don’t want to go back to life as usual. I want something more – something better for humanity and something better for our ecosystem.

I’ve harbored a vision for a long time, and that vision is pretty – to stay grounded in my home and community and develop bonds with the people and spaces around me. I see our current economy as being akin to a bulldozer clear-cutting a forest. When we should be devising new modes of public transportation, highways for cars are widened. When we should be finding new ways to harness the sun’s power and other sustainable innovations, we’ve seen pipelines being dug – and more pollution in the air and groundwater.

I’ve often dismissed the concerns that I felt before I ever heard the words “climate change.” I couldn’t explain the nagging worry I felt around sustainability because it seemed so foreign to the drive for prosperity and seeming invincibility in the culture around me. After all, our leaders constantly remind us that we are America, second to none. And now, this pandemic has reminded me that life is fragile and that we are not invincible. Mostly, I have honestly been afraid to really examine the predictions of scientists around climate change.

As science offers real resources during this crisis, I am asking myself what lessons there might be here for climate change. When scientists in the CDC quietly but visibly communicated on their website in February that the spread of this disease was inevitable, I acted. I began to prepare my mind. I began to prepare our home and stock up our pantry with some essentials to help us get by some weeks without going to the store.

Maybe it’s finally time I have the courage to listen to, understand and act on the alarm bells scientists have been sounding for my entire 42 years of life.

I want to stay home, not for COVID-19 but for other reasons. I want to keep getting to know my neighbors. Getting to know the land and this place where I live – for my sake and for my children’s. I’m so scared to admit it, but that’s exactly what I want us all to do, all the while building a healthier economy, a healthier environment and healthier ways of life than previously known. This will take some doing, of course, but we know “business as usual” will likely result in the undoing of us all, so the first option seems like the more sensible of the two.

I’ve often dismissed my vision – my dream – not thinking it possible. But, now I’ve seen how fast sweeping change can happen (and I’m at home) – so I see that possibilities for collective action for the good (and the bad) are possible.

We have learned through COVID-19 that we are more interconnected than we knew. A breath of air with a lethal pathogen has managed to be shared and passed person-to-person in a matter of months across the globe. If we are so connected with each other, then we must, too, be interconnected to the spaces between us. Our water, our air, our land – it is not “the environment.” It is who I am; it is who we all are.

I pray we find a way to collectively harness our wisdom, creativity and intelligence to do this together in a humane and sustainable way.

Susan Pepper lives near Sylva, North Carolina, with her husband and two children and is a singer/songwriter in the old traditions of the mountains and movie producer. 

"The Blame Game"—Stop It

The Trump Administration blames China  for the spread of the virus, implying it may have even been intentional, and threatens higher tariffs or other actions for compensation. Our National Intelligence Agency has been dispatched to carry out the investigation of China.

The Democrats and some Republicans blame Trump for having dismissed the virus a threat for far to long, causing needless deaths as a result.

Republican blame Democrats for politicizing the epidemic to get Trump out of office.

Trump blames Obama for not having stockpiled supplies, even tough he (Trump) had been in office for three years.

Stop it. This is madness.

There will be a time and the need for throughly examining the causes of this epidemic: what could and should have been done differently to lessen its impact and the learning for the future. But now the focus needs to be like  a laser  on everyone's working cooly and as wisely as possible, protecting lives while getting people and the Nation back to work.

Political leaders and the media need to stop the blame game now and focus on what matters now.

The Future Global Order—A Fork in the Road

Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, has written an important article in the April 7th issue of Foreign Affairs.  The headline of the article summarizes Haas's conclusion: "The Pandemic Will Accelerate History Rather Than  Reshape It". 

    . 

Haas  is a realist. He is deeply informed. I respect him. But in this judgement, I hope he is wrong. 

No doubt, , the future following Covid-19 which he predicts— an acceleration of  the populist, nationally-centric policies which we are increasingly  seeing today-- would rightly be deemed the "most likely"one  based on the evidence in hand. 

It is, however, for me, a very dangerous one. It would certainly spell a lost major opportunity--for if there is one thing Covid-19 is doing more than any other in my adult life time is giving teeth to the well-worn mantra that we really are all in this together and that we will not resolve the major challenges we face in the world successfully without strong International  coordination. 

We are seeing that the response to Covid-19 is requiring complete unity and coordination—public, private, government at every level, nationally and globally, hospitals, healthcare workers, and every one of us no matter who we are. 

Covid-19 presents two driving dynamics: 1) those forces which underscore how connected we are in this world (e.g.witness how the disease travels) and the opportunities this offers and demands (e.g. sharing medical discoveries, learning, organized immigration policy, border control etc.); and 2) other competing forces which accelerate the drive for national separation (e.g restricting immigration; securing national not imported supplies).

It is a fact  that prior to Covid-19, leadership in much of the world, including the United States, has been moving increasingly toward a more exclusive national focus and away from multi-national agreements.. There have been many forces driving this, including increased pressure of  immigration, futile and costly involvement by the U.S. in the Middle East, weakness in European common market and U.N. leadership, adversarial U.S. relations with China and Russia ( powers which must work together if we are to achieve global effort against the existential threats of climate change and nuclear proliferation) and the U.S.'s abandonment of the Paris accord and TPP, and other multi-national agreements. 

I had hoped, and I still hope, that  the Covid-19 crisis will compel us to see the need to work together, to strengthen institutions like WHO and the U.N .and the EEC. To date, there is no sign of that happening. I see very little chance of its happening  under under a Trump administration.  As Richard Haas points out, it will also be extremely difficult for Biden, assuming his election.

Nevertheless, several things keep my hope alive.

The first is that we are and will remain a global economy for good economic reasons, quite beyond any ideological motivation.

Second, beyond the threat of a future pandemic, we face two undeniable existential threats to the very existence of  life on this planet as we know it today: 1) environmental deterioration and 2) nuclear disaster and war. Neither of these threats can be overcome without effective global organization and agreements. The question in my mind has always been: how much pain we will have to suffer (akin if you like to the devastation wrought by WWII and WWI before it) before we finally recognize and act on this need for global agreements and policies on these undeniable existential threats.   

I hope that Covid-19 will begin to tip the scales. It is presenting powerful evidence of the need to work globally on key issues including sharing knowledge and expertise and resources among the medical and scientific community. As just one example,  on a recent conference call with the Heads of the Schools of Public Health and Nursing at Yale, we learned that the Nursing Association in China is sharing protocols on their learning in combating the virus in China and having them translated into English.  Sharing like this will come naturally for the scientific community provided it is supported by the leadership of  the principal nations and a strengthened WHO. 

I believe that if Joe Biden is elected President, the United States will take practical steps in the right direction, rejoining the Paris accord and helping lead effective global action on climate control. He can also bring back the Iran treaty  on nuclear capability  I believe it should be possible even if difficult to update the START treaty and reach agreement with China and Russia on nuclear proliferation. Remember, we reached agreement with Russia on nuclear weapons controls when it was still part of the Soviet Union. 

Development of immigration polices which reflect a collective multi-national and not solely individual country perspective is critically important—and will be extremely challenging. However, we and other countries must try. Failure to do so up until now is a big reason explaining the rise of populist national leaders like Hungary's Orban and our own President and it is influencing the political dynamics in almost every country. Beyond that and most painfully,  it is resulting in the greatest refugee crisis in modern history.

Practically, at this moment,  we must  look to new Presidential  leadership in the United States to take concrete steps toward achieving collective action, both domestically (for example,  Covid-19 reveals deep racial inequities in health care)  and globally, against our key existential threats of epidemics like Covid-19, climate change and nuclear proliferation 

 It will be vital to identify Congressional leaders from both parties that see these imperatives and are prepared to guide and  support the President on these policies. We will also need media to shape public opinion to see the realty of the need to work together across the globe on specific key issues and trumpet the benefits of doing so. 

This will be very difficult. It will not be the task of a single administration. It will take many years. We stand at a crossroads, as Yaroslav Trofimov writes is an essay in the "Wall Street Journal". Will the route we take to tackle the pandemic and its economic fallout follow the route of national grievances and finger pointing  and protectionism which country after country embraced after WWI with its disastrous outcome? Or will the pandemic, with it lessons, spur a renewed commitment for cooperation and shared solutions as happened after WWII—though this time, unlike post-WWII, on a global basis?  

History offers hope. As Winston Churchill once remarked, "the future is unknowable but the past should give us hope"—the hope, as Jon Meacham brilliantly offers, that human ingenuity, reason and character can combine to save us from the abyss and keep us on a path, in another phrase of Churchill's, to a broad sunlit road.  

We must hold to our vision, mindful of the current realities and challenges, but not flinching from them. Richard Haas is right in saying that Covid-19, in and of itself, is not going to lead to a dramatic shift in the recent populist direction of global and national polices. In fact, as we have seen,  it will reinforce some of them. Crises like Covid-19 expose problems, often painfully,  but they do not supply alternatives, let alone the political will to make the changes happen. 

The change we need  will require fresh ideas and strong leadership. I believe that providing these ideas and the leadership to make them happen is the overriding responsibility of our generation. May those who look back a century from now be able to say that our generation seized the lessons coming from the Covid-19 epidemic as well as they could. They chose the right path. They mustered the fresh ideas and the political will to reengage strong international coordination on the most important challenges the world faced. I hope and pray that is what they will be able to say, for the very future of our country and our planet  depends on it.  

What Is The Coronavirus Teaching Us?

As this epidemic continues to takes its grim toll around the world, I see us learning and relearning many things, above all  how interconnected we all are —for better or for wore--and how much we can achieve if we join forces and work together against common goals. 

On the positive side, I have never seen the community come together across every sector—business, government, medical, universities, faith-based, non-profits, everyone--as well as  we are at this moment. On a phone conference from my alma-mater,  Yale, I learn that a Chinese  nurse association is not only  sharing their protocols with the United States and other countries but is translating them into English. I learn that scientists are sharing their papers on open platforms so that new insights can be shared everywhere quickly, disregarding claims for proprietary privilege. 

Governors in the Northeast and on the West Coast are collaborating to forge common regulations respecting the reality of inter-state travel in the interest of all their citizens.

Here in Cincinnati, we have some 40+ food distribution organizations working together to get food to the neediest. Most of these didn't talk to each other before. The Greater Cincinnati Fountain and the United Way unite to raise over $5 million in a couple of weeks for a special Covid-19 fund supporting first line workers helping people. Major hospitals no longer act as competitors but collaborators as they jointly plan to ensure there are sufficient. beds to handle the expected surge 

Arch rivals, Apple and Google  join forces to create software that promises to allow people who test positive to register that  fact on their smart phone. This will enable other people who came into close proximity to them to know they might have had the virus transmitted to them.  

Arch rival drug companies, GlaxoSmith-Kline and Sanofi, join forces in an unprecedented partnership to develop a coronavirus vaccine. 

Companies, Procter & Gamble (P&G) prominent among them, have quickly added capability in their plants to produce facial masks, ventilators  and hand sanitizers. To take just two of many examples, P&G's Pampers brand in China has developed a contest for babies to keep busy and in Italy a link to a musical video which shows babies how to wash their hands .

Positively, we have gained a far higher respect for scientifically based data and the uses of technology for communication. Zooms daily active users jumped from 10 million to over 200 million in just 3 months. 

 And we have gained—the hard way-- much greater awareness of the need to  be prepared to respond to future disasters, including ones that impact the entire globe overnight as this one has.  One result of this will be far less willingness to rely on single sources of supply for disaster-critical materials and likely have more of them produced domestically. 

As in any crisis, the relative strength and character of leaders are being revealed. We are witnessing strong leadership in many,  many quarters—governors like Ohio's Mike DeWine and mayors like San Francisco's London  Breed, corporate leaders, medical leaders like Dr, Fauci and Dr. Birx and the heroic healthcare workers on the front line.  Sadly, dangerously,  we have not witnessed it in the President of out Nation.

On the dark side, we are seeing deaths now over 25,000 in our country, over 10,000 in New York alone. and over 120.000 world wide, over 20,000 in Italy, my wife's and my "second home"with the numbers still climbing. Over 16 million workers have already filed for unemployment in the U.S. Hundreds of business have closed, including my son's fast food business in Boston.

Beneath these numbers lies untold grief, fear and uncertainty: "will I have a job?", "will my business reopen?" And there is the loneliness of millions, many isolated in one and two room apartments.

Never have I been so conscious  of my own and my family's privilege.

We are also seeing, starkly, the horrible, deadly consequences of our systemic inequality in people's access to good health and living conditions. I hope and pray we will finally take decisive action to close this gap.  We have long known that the average black man's life expectancy is almost 10 years lower than the average white man. Now, we are seeing this realty play out in the morgues of the nation. There is no excuse not to act on this reality today by providing quality health care for ALL and upgrading livable residential opportunities for the poor. 

Returning to where I started. 

I have never seen more united and determined action by all parts of the community—State. local, private, government, academic,  health care, non-profits, everyone--to battle an existential challenge. 

It is inspiring. It is necessary. 

It is famously and rightly said, "It Takes a Village". Well, we have such a village right here in our community and in our Nation and it is thriving. You can feel its pulse. 

May this spirit of collaboration be long remembered and called on to unite our community and Nation in confronting other existential challenges and opportunities we face.

Too Beautiful; Too Wise Not to Share. What's It Means to be "Ahead"

My daughter-in-law, Kim Pepper, shared this with me. Author unknown

What if instead of “behind” this group of kids are advanced because of this. 

What if they have more empathy, they enjoy family connection, they can be more creative and entertain themselves, they love to read, they love to express themselves in writing. 

What if they enjoy the simple things, like their own backyard and sitting near a window in the quiet.
What if they notice the birds and the dates different flowers emerge and the calming renewal of a gentle rain? 

What if this generation are the ones who learn to cook and organize their space and do their laundry and keep a well run home? 

What if they learn to stretch a dollar and learn to live with less?
What if they learn the value of eating together as a family and finding the good to share in the small delights of the every day? 

What if they are the ones to place great value on our teachers and educational professionals, librarians, public servants and previously invisible essential support workers like truck drivers, grocers, cashiers, custodial workers, health care workers and their supporting staff, just to name a few of the millions taking care of us while we are sheltered in place? 

What if, among these children, a great leader emerges who had the benefit of a slower pace and a simpler life to truly learn what really matters in this life? 

What if they are “ahead”?❤️ 

Happy Easter everyone!

Seizing the Opportunity Revealed Anew by Covid-19

Even with—perhaps in part because of—the physical separation which this epidemic demands, we are ever more conscious of how much we mean to each other, how much we depend on one another. We are more aware than ever that because Covid-19 is so contagious, we literally are connected,  what we do effects others and vice versa. 

I see us rallying together as a community (for example in the distribution of food; in companies coming together to chart a course back for the economy), I see States increasingly, even if too slowly imposing standard restrictions recognizing that their citizens may travel to another state spreading the virus which has been less constrained in their own. 

This coming together as a community is going on all over the world. In Italy, the UK, China Russia, everywhere. And it is going on between countries too, as companies work collectively to manufacture equipment which heroic heath care workers need; as scientists and doctors work around the clock to identify and produce an insulin and treatment to eradicate this disease; and as we  monitor and learn from the course of the epidemic in different places. 

It shows what is possible and necessary, when we recognize we really are in this together and that only by acting together can we achieve our goals. 

Jill Meyer, President of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, wrote something this morning which captures succinctly and beautifully that which we must work to sustain and extend from this experience. Our opportunity rests in "making happen what we can and should to tee up a better version of our collective 'us'".

In the past, we have marshaled the power of collective empathy and action at times of existential crises. But as we know, memories have been short. Today, may we marshal the wisdom and the will to carry this collective spirit and action forward, with imagination in identifying the opportunities and dedication to fulfilling  them.

Our world demands it. In no area more important than the threat to our planet from relentless climate change. Like Corvid-19, it calls for united effort by governments, scientists, corporations, and every single person. 

Corporate America and P&G Respond to the Coronavirus Epidemic

 As those of you who read my blogs might recall, I have published several pieces asserting Corporations" responsibility and opportunity to add value and bring support to society and  their communities. At no time is this as important than at a time of crisis like the world is experiencing  right now with the tragic Covid-19 epidemic. 

And corporations are responding. My company—Procter & Gamble is one of them, building on its tradition of over 175 years. How it is doing this is spelled out in this letter to employees from P&G's CEO, David Taylor.  

************************************************************************************************************************************

We (P&G) have a long history of supporting communities in times of need—and we are answering the call to do even more. We’re stepping up to provide much needed product donations and financial support. Our contributions of product and in-kind support now exceed $15MM and will continue to increase as we work with communities around the world to understand how we can best serve them.

Millions of P&G products are being donated from 30 brands in more than 20 countries, with more on the way. These donations ensure that families who do not have basic access to the everyday essentials many of us take for granted, can have the cleaning, health, and hygiene benefits P&G brands can provide.

Our contributions are broad-based with cash support to ensure disaster relief organizations can meet immediate needs, including hygiene education and medical equipment and supplies. We’re partnering with some of the world’s leading relief organizations, including the International Federation of Red Cross, Americares and Direct Relief, and key regional organizations such as Feeding America, Matthew 25: Ministries, the China Youth Development Foundation, One Foundation, the Korea Disaster Relief Association, the United Way, and more.

P&G people across the world are stepping up to use our innovation, marketing and manufacturing expertise to directly support our communities for the greater good.

We have installed new lines to start production of hand sanitizer in five manufacturing sites around the world, using it to ensure our people can continue operating safely and sharing it with hospitals, health authorities and relief organizations. We are expanding manufacturing capacity further in additional facilities in the coming weeks and will have a capacity of at least 45,000 liters per week when fully operational.

Work is underway to produce critically needed face masks at nearly a dozen P&G manufacturing sites around the world. We’re up and running already in China. We have teams working to install capacity in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and will quickly begin production in the coming weeks. This is important for several reasons:

1. It will increase the supply of masks for hospitals, first responders and other organizations by reducing market demand for production and industrial use;
2. It helps us create a safe working environment for P&G people;
3. Longer term, it will allow us to directly help many communities across the globe where there is unprecedented need for protective supplies. 

And we’re not stopping there. Around the world, P&G people are evaluating how we can be of service to the communities who desperately need help. We’re in this together and working side-by-side with retail customers, suppliers, agency partners and government officials to do our part. We’re using areas of P&G capability and know-how to develop and deliver solutions to protect those who are most vulnerable. We’re funding startups with innovative ideas and partnering with established companies who have complementary capabilities. We’re also using our marketing and communications expertise to encourage consumers to support public health measures to help flatten the curve and slow the spread of the virus. 

We cannot predict how and when this crisis will end but we’re committed to be part of the solution. We have mobilized the full capabilities of P&G and our partners to help out in this time of need, and we will be there for our employees, consumers and communities—stepping up as a force for good—however long it takes.

David Taylor