New Year, New “Normal”: How Should We Enter 2021?

As we enter 2021, I’m reminded of the phrase, “new year, new me.” We make our new year’s resolutions each year, hoping for a wave of change in our lives, but are often disappointed when we see little of it. During the final months of 2020, I noticed a lot of people hoping for us to return “back to normal.” After the storm of a year that was 2020, I have a few reflections on achieving “normalcy” once again. What does normalcy mean to us, and is it the same experience for everyone? Perhaps our resolutions can be a lot more meaningful this year.

The past year has highlighted the urgency of the climate crisis we are enduring. Due to travel restrictions and stay at home orders, pollution levels decreased in 2020; the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air reported a 25% in CO2 emissions in China after national lockdowns. In April of 2020, daily global emissions had decreased by 17%. Travel restrictions also reduced air travel significantly, resulting in even less pollution. However, it is very likely that, once pandemic restrictions are lifted, we will go back to square one in the global climate crisis. By June 11 of 2020, as some countries lifted their lockdowns, global emissions were only 5% lower than they were in the previous year. Meanwhile, in China, pollution levels are reaching pre-pandemic levels as manufacturers and factories scramble to make up for lost production time. There are also questions surrounding if governments will focus supporting destructive industries to rebuild their economies once the pandemic has passed.

2020 also brought attention to social and systematic inequalities. The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police, caught on camera, sparked some of the largest Black Lives Matter protests in recent memory. In Canada, the same effect was felt with the police killings of Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto and Chantel Moore in New Brunswick. Although black, Indigenous people of colour around the world have faced violence and inequality for many years, more people expressed commitments to allyship in the past year. People of colour were met with more challenges during the pandemic than white people, providing more examples of systematic inequalities. In America, the black unemployment rate increased the most during government shutdowns, and black Americans were more likely to contract COVID-19 and receive poor health treatment. With frustrations building and more time on people’s hands, masses of people took to the streets to call for an end to inequalities and violence. Although racial violence and injustice is deeply rooted in our history, our time during the pandemic has encouraged more people to learn and fight for justice.

Problems within national and global health systems were brought to the forefront of conversations during the past year. Some criticized the World Health Organization (WHO) for waiting too long to declare COVID-19 a pandemic and recommend mask-wearing as a preventive measure. Decisions made by the WHO go through many bureaucratic processes and bring together medical experts around the world, resulting in slower reactions to public health threats. While people waited for a response from the WHO about the new virus, misinformation began to spread online. Some was even spread by political figures and celebrities with large bases of followers. As our world becomes more connected and borders becoming a less strict boundary of separation, it is important to have a cohesive and coherent response to public health crises. This starts with faster responses to health crises and unified messages based in scientific fact. This also starts with providing resources to poorer countries that need to fight the pandemic. For example, the European Union announced a donation of 15 billion euros for developing countries to combat COVID-19. When one country fails in response to public health crises, we all fail.

When we say we want everything to go “back to normal” this year, we may be forgetting that the status quo has been damaging to our planet, marginalized groups, and others around the world. If anything, it may be worse if things went “back to normal” after 2020. Instead, we should be striving for something greater by asking ourselves and our institutions what we can do better. None of these things will change overnight, and we must be committed to making changes, big or small, in society. We should be looking to practice real activism instead of performative activism, where one shows support for a movement to look better to others, such as their followers on social media. I’m hopeful we can make these changes, but we must not push these goals aside once our lives are back in gear. Although we make many new year’s resolutions that may never come to fruition, I urge us to enter the new year with a revived sense of urgency to change our world.