The world after coronavirus

The world after coronavirus

POLITICO explores the impacts of the pandemic on daily life, democracy and the EU.

By POLITICO 4/29/20, 1:20 PM CET Updated 5/4/20, 6:42 AM CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/the-world-after-coronavirus-crisis-society-culture-economy/

The world we knew before COVID-19 is gone. The one that comes after is still at least partly up to us.

The crisis has put entire countries under lockdown, devastated countless businesses, killed hundreds of thousands of people and upended hundreds of millions, if not billions, of lives.

The question now: What comes next?

As the world begins to look at what it will be like to live life with the coronavirus — or the threat of future outbreaks — it’s already clear that the pandemic has the potential to disrupt industries, accelerate cultural and economic trends, or be used by policymakers or advocates gunning for transformative agendas.

POLITICO journalists asked dozens of experts and policymakers what they believe the epidemic will — or, in their view, should — change. Here are their answers.

If current trends continue, the coronavirus crisis will...

... kill the office.

The commercial real estate market stands to take a serious hit because of the coronavirus crisis. Many businesses are not expected to reopen once the crisis passes — leaving much unoccupied office space. Others may allow their employees to continue working from home and opt to save cash by taking advantage of more flexible co-working spaces.

Despite occasional frustrations that come with remote working, managers in some industries have discovered how practical videoconferencing can be. "It’s much more effective than having hundreds of meeting[s]," said Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, "only now people realize how easy it is to use them.” Hubertus Heil, Germany's labor minister, is drafting a law to give people the right to work from home even after the crisis.

According to consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics, two years from now up to 30 percent of workers could be working from home multiple days per week.

The vacated commercial spaces may be of use to cities like Madrid, Rome and Amsterdam, which for years have struggled with a housing crisis and rising residential rents.

Even offices that continue to function will have to adjust in order to prepare for the pandemics that scientists cited by the World Economic Forum predict will be increasingly common in the future because of globalization and climate change.

Paternoster lifts and “Shabbat elevators” — which run without anyone having to press germ-covered buttons — could become more common, and office spaces are likely to be more spaced out, as evidenced by examples like the Six Feet Office developed by real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield.

— Aitor Hernández-Morales

... devastate the restaurant sector.

It's hard to imagine Europe not returning to its culture of eating out and open-air cafés. But even when the lockdowns are over, the experience of China shows that people are very reluctant to return to dining out.

According to Adrian Cummins, a board member of HOTREC, a hospitality trade body, it will take some time before the situation for restaurants returns to anywhere near how things were before the lockdowns.

"What we need to do in our sector now, which is the most important thing, is we need to restore confidence," he said. "We need to make sure that consumers are confident that going to a restaurant is a right thing."

In China, the restaurants that have reopened have had to introduce extra safety measures: masks for staff, sufficient spacing between tables, and temperature checks. Similar measures could soon be introduced in Europe, which may make it hard for restaurants that make it through the immediate crisis to operate. Spacing out diners inevitably means fewer covers — and that could be enough to kill off many businesses.

Even if consumers want to eat out, they might find their favorite places are gone. Cummins estimates that in Ireland, where he lives, 40-50 percent of restaurants might not reopen. That is why, he says, the European Commission and national governments should help businesses with non-refundable grant aid or zero-percent loans.

— Zosia Wanat

... shorten food supply chains.

One of the first tangible impacts of the coronavirus that most Europeans witnessed outside hospitals was the panic-buying and empty shelves fueled by fears of shortages. Later, national border restrictions made it hard for truckers to transport goods across countries and for seasonal farmworkers to harvest fields.

Some argue the crisis should prompt profound reflection on the relationship between Europeans and our food, from what we're eating now under lockdown, to what we should be eating when it's all over — as well as where it comes from.

The European Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski argues that one of the main lessons is that Europe needs to grow its own crops, so it depends less on outside sources and bolsters the bloc's own food security.

“We have to have our own food, produced on our fields, by our own farmers, and we have to take better care of local markets, shorten those supply chains,” he said in an interview with POLITICO.

Farming is already heavily subsidized by the Common Agricultural Policy, and the bloc is a net food exporter. But within the EU, the food supply in some individual countries is reliant on transportation and workers from abroad.

“There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that there’ll be more and more calls for re-localized, 're-territorialized' food systems,” said Olivier De Schutter, co-chair of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. "Never before has there been such an incredible interest in short supply chains,” he added.

De Schutter said the EU could improve some of its policies — on public procurement, competition, the CAP scheme and its nascent Farm to Fork strategy to improve sustainability — to give advantages to local, smaller and organic farmers.

— Zosia Wanat

... encourage people to eat better.

The crisis has also changed consumers' relationship with their food. National lockdowns and restaurant closures have nudged Europeans into their kitchens to bake bread and banana cake and more interesting evening meals. Many are also choosing the closest grocer to them, instead of opting for shopping at big supermarkets.

According to a YouGov survey conducted at the beginning of April, 42 percent of British people said they value food more than they did before the crisis, 38 percent reported cooking more often from scratch, and 33 percent said they throw away less food.

The poll also showed a clear majority wanted to see at least some of the personal or social changes they have experienced over the last month continue.

"Our expectation is that hopefully the consumers are going to regain some of the respect for food that previous generations had," said Mette Lykke, the CEO of Too Good To Go, an app that aims to reduce food waste. "For a long time, we haven’t really appreciated the true value of our food; we’ve just taken it for granted.

"[Most people] have actually realized that we can live in a quite different way and still be pretty well off," Lykke said, adding that consumers might turn to better-quality food. "A lot of this stuff we used to buy, we might not necessarily be interested in anymore."

The pandemic has led to a surge in demand for organic and sustainable foods, according to Ecovia Intelligence, a research company. In France, for example, some organic food shops are reporting sales increases of over 40 percent.

— Zosia Wanat

... expand protections for gig workers.

The coronavirus crisis has divided workers into two classes: those who can work from home, and those forced to risk infection. While online platforms such as Uber and Deliveroo argue that their model offers people flexibility and control over their earnings, the crisis has shown how little freedom workers really have.

The digital proletariat — those working for food-delivery, ride-hailing and e-commerce platforms — have little choice but to show up in order to serve remote customers. “The myth of the empowered gig economy worker has been fatally wounded by the COVID-19 crisis,” said Nicola Countouris, professor of labor law at University College London.

Governments will have to rethink social protections and labor rights for new kinds of work, especially as the newly laid-off turn to platforms for income. “There is going to be an increase of online work, but it won’t all be of good quality and with enough protection, especially not in times of shock,” said Anna Thomas, director of the Institute for the Future of Work.

As the number of precarious workers grows, policy debates will heat up around how gig worker should be classified and support for policies like a universal basic income may gain traction, Thomas said. Spain has announced it is rolling out universal basic income permanently. If it succeeds, others may follow.

Gig economy companies have been adamant that their workers should not be classed as "employees." That means that many are not entitled to employee protection from the state, nor to bailouts for businesses offered to help them weather the crisis. Once COVID-19 subsides, that will be harder to sustain.

— Melissa Heikkilä

... move grocery shopping online.

With consumers too scared to leave their homes to shop for groceries, retailers have had no choice but to go online. Some of them, like Britain's Tesco or Belgium's Delhaize, already had online platforms, while others have had to get creative.

France's Carrefour teamed up with UberEats to boost its delivery service, while Poland's biggest retailer Biedronka started to partner with the Spanish startup Glovo to deliver food to customers' doorsteps. Some smaller stores, such as the Parisian organic shop Kilogramme, built their own e-commerce services within 24 hours.

This trend will continue when the crisis is over, said Christian Verschueren, director general of EuroCommerce, a trade body. "If we learned one thing through this [crisis, it] is that digital transformation has been accelerated and will be accelerated," he said.

"People who have never gone online for their groceries have now started to go online for groceries,” he added. “I think all food retailers have seen an increase in e-commerce, and I think that will definitely not go away."

Could that mean supermarkets as we know them will disappear, or will be run by machines? In the U.S., Amazon's technology for cashier-free shops is becoming increasingly popular, but in Europe the change might not come that fast.

Verschueren said the robotization of retail on the Continent will continue — think more contactless payment options and self-checkouts to reduce opportunities to transmit the virus — but the technology can't totally replace human workers, especially in times of crisis.

"Even with the best artificial intelligence and the best robotization, I don’t think the sector would have been able to deal better with the supply, because at the end of the day, it’s actually the human invention and the human resilience that was able to cope with an increasing demand," he said.

— Zosia Wanat

... make the bicycle king.

Will bicycles rule the post-corona city? Campaigners and local officials hope so.

From Berlin to Bogotá, and Vancouver to Milan, cities are already taking steps to broaden bike lanes to allow people to cycle while keeping a safe social distance from others. City residents are also enjoying the cleaner air from a massive drop in city traffic — a feature of lockdown life they may want to retain after restrictions begin to ease.

“Moving around on bike or on foot is … the only real pandemic-resilient mobility there is,” a coalition of activists wrote in an open letter to German Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer earlier this month.

Urban mobility is a zero-sum game: The more space is given to cyclists, the more restrictions need to be imposed on cars. With vehicle traffic suppressed, campaigners see an opportunity to make a shift to two-wheeled transport, although it remains to be seen whether commuters will stay out of their cars once confinement restrictions are lifted — particularly if they are nervous about public transport.

In Brussels, authorities are moving to impose a 20-kilometer-per-hour speed limit on motor vehicles within the congested center to give more space to cyclists and pedestrians.

“The changes have to be permanent to be an improvement,” said Morten Kabell, a former mayor for environmental affairs in Copenhagen and co-CEO of the European Cyclists’ Federation. “Wider and more bicycle lanes can transport more people than car lanes can … and it’s cheaper to build bike infrastructure.”

Spain’s environment minister, Teresa Ribera, has backed efforts to shift transport infrastructure, while France’s environment minister, Élisabeth Borne, has said she’s making cash available for cities to extend cycling paths during the pandemic. Campaigners across Germany are calling for wider bike lanes, strict speed limits and “larger, car-free shared spaces.” They also want to turn entire neighborhoods into bike-only zones.

In an effort to create more public space for people to walk around without being crammed on narrow sidewalks, Vienna has banned cars on some streets to create new “meeting zones” instead.

— Kalina Oroschakoff and Josh Posaner

... redraw city maps.

"Think global, act local" has long been the mantra of the environmental and social justice movements. The coronavirus crisis might help trigger its broader adoption, and change cities in the process.

The ongoing lockdown has expanded our digital and local lives while contracting physical and global ones. Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, argued in the Economist that the trend will continue. "Even afterward, local resilience will be prized over global efficiency," he wrote.

City officials and campaigners are already pushing for a rethink of urban planning, to reclaim public space and improve local living. Months before the appearance of the coronavirus, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo made the concept of the “15-minute city” a pillar of her reelection campaign.

The Socialist proposed turning the French capital into a collective of self-sufficient communities with everything — groceries, parks, gyms, health centers, schools and workplaces — just a 15-minute walk away from every resident’s doorstep.

COVID-19-related restrictions have inadvertently turned Hidalgo’s plan — which was meant to reduce the pollution and stress created by daily commutes — into a reality, with Parisians forbidden under most circumstances to stray more than 1 kilometer from their homes.

It would not be the first time that a crisis was used to revolutionize urban planning in Europe: Lisbon’s utilitarian grid layout was developed as the Marquis of Pombal sought to rebuild the Portuguese capital after a devastating 1755 earthquake.

Fathers of the “Red Vienna” city sought to address the housing crisis created by post-WWI urban migration by building grand self-sufficient living communities, exemplified by Karl-Marx Hof, a massive, housing complex that contains schools, health clinics, athletic infrastructure, gardens, beauty salons and shops.

— Kalina Oroschakoff and Aitor Hernández-Morales

... push public transport into the red.

The global health crisis is accelerating a shift away from cash payments for public transport. Bus drivers in Berlin and London, for example, are now sealed in their cabins, and tickets can no longer be bought on board.

That's accelerated the shift to app-based ticketing systems. And where physical ticket controls have vanished completely, some travelers are enjoying (effectively) free transit.

Even once things start to gradually return to normal, decreased use of public transport will mean services will run way beneath profitability. Local authorities will have to provide major subsidies to maintain transport links, or risk the mothballing of tram and subway routes.

Even before the pandemic, authorities in places such as Luxembourg and Vienna had already moved to make public transport free (or heavily discounted to €1 per day) as part of efforts to get cars off the road.

Other transit changes will be more subtle, but are likely to stick. For example, carriage doors now open automatically on many subway systems, with messages for commuters to avoid regular touch points such as handles that could spread the infection.

To counter fears of contagion, Transport for London, the authority that manages and regulates the U.K. capital’s transport network, has promised to deploy long-lasting anti-viral cleaning fluids.

— Josh Posaner

... ground the airline industry.

Videoconferencing has taken the place of face-to-face meetings (and air miles that come with them) as big companies like Facebook, Rio Tinto and BP froze travel even before government lockdowns shuttered their employees at home.

The longer that continues, the less likely that the old corporate travel bonanza is to return. Companies will be able to evaluate closely how productivity under lockdown compares — and whether the millions spent on corporate travel are really worth it.

With the future uncertain, Facebook has ruled out holding events with more than 50 people until at least June 2021 and has banned business travel until at least June this year. Others may follow suit.

Airlines are noticing. The airline lobby IATA is generally bullish when it comes to travel demand, but even its chief economist, Brian Pearce, admitted the forced break from air travel could change habits.

"If we see a bigger increase in videoconferencing technology as a substitute for business meetings, there is a possibility people might shun long-haul," he said. Airlines who had built their brand around adding "a personal touch" might have to rethink that too.

Once the crisis subsides, leisure travel may not be the same either. Under lockdown, people are staying closer to home, and it’s unclear whether holidaymakers — nervous about what they might catch — will be itching to get on a plane once restrictions are lifted.

Nearby locations tend to be cheaper, and getting somewhere by car is less risky, at least from an infectious disease point of view, than being packed in a plane.

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary says he will counter that thinking with a blitz of low ticket prices. He predicts that families cooped up in their homes will be desperate to fly once the shackles are off.

His competitors have taken a more conservative line. Many have deferred plane deliveries, believing it will take years before air travel returns to pre-pandemic levels.

— Saim Saeed

... change the airport experience.

Airports have long been countries' gatekeepers, but the pandemic may require them to be de facto doctors too. Since the pandemic hit, numerous countries have installed facilities including temperature checks and COVID-19 testing equipment in terminals to screen passengers.

Fears of a second wave of the disease or some future pathogen mean those facilities might remain for longer than the outbreak itself. In some cases, airlines themselves are testing passengers for the disease.

The need for social distancing will also present challenges. Maintaining that in lines at security and immigration will require more space and different layouts.

Passengers are also likely to find that they will encounter fewer staff while passing through security and into their plane, so as to minimize infection risk.

Design changes will also mean fewer opportunities to pick up an infection by touching surfaces. That means more cleaning, no check-in screens and more contactless security and identification checks.

The development of facial recognition technologies, long in the works, could be expedited to track passengers through the airport and reduce the need for physical checks — though such measures would come with privacy and surveillance concerns.

With a predicted recession and demand in free fall, companies and policymakers are also considering shelving airport expansion plans.

"Returning as quickly as possible to full operational capabilities under a 'new normal' ... will involve new requirements for our staff, facilities, services and processes," said lobby group ACI-Europe's Director General Olivier Jankovec.

"Understanding what these requirements will be and shaping them is of crucial importance, as well as addressing longer-term impacts on a full range of issues — from airport layout and equipment to our economic and business models."

— Saim Saeed

... expose tech giants as public utilities.

In times of crisis, people typically turn to government authorities for help. With COVID-19, they've also turned to Big Tech.

Facebook has teamed up with national public health agencies to keep people informed; Google has peppered search results with the latest updates on how to keep safe; Amazon has become an arm of many countries' postal services, as people rely on the e-commerce giant for everything from groceries to toilet paper.

That trend — of treating some of Silicon Valley's biggest names as de facto public utilities — will not ebb as the number of global fatalities linked to the coronavirus eventually subsides.

By providing up-to-the-minute advice, guidance and logistics, these companies have cemented themselves in public life even more so than they had done pre-COVID-19. Pulling back from that will be difficult, if not impossible.

The consequences are likely to be felt across society. Regular interactions with government agencies and other public bodies will often also involve Big Tech. Think a national tax authority providing updates on WhatsApp, or Amazon delivering medical supplies to the elderly on behalf of a public heath agency. The lines between public bodies and these private companies will become blurred.

The effects of labeling Big Tech as public utilities could go two ways. It may cement their position in society, driving off competitors and making them quasi-equals to government agencies.

Or it may force regulators to clamp down on their activities, limiting their revenue sources as is done with other public utilities. Much will depend on how these companies perform during the crisis — and how governments react in the aftermath.

— Mark Scott

... strip away privacy rights.

"Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes," wrote Israeli philosopher Yuval Noah Harari in late March, as the West woke up to the fact that it too would have to deal with a deadly disease that many thought would remain far away.

For democracies that hold fundamental rights dear, that has meant some painful soul-searching as governments have turned to phone tracking and other surveillance measures to tame the outbreak.

Officials have trotted out reassurances — that these are extraordinary times, and that intrusive technology deployed now will be wound down once the crisis is over — but many fear the genie is now out of the bottle.

As the EU's data protection supervisor Wojciech Wiewiórowski said at a webinar recently: “If we create the system of tracking … it will stay here."

Even if we decide we want to "come back to the world without the contact tracing, without the location tracking, the weapons, the tools will be around anyway," he added.

— Vincent Manancourt

... empower the EU in public health.

Europe's initial response to the coronavirus looked chaotic and uncoordinated: flight bans, border closures and blocks on exports of protective gear by national capitals that weren't talking to each other.

Brussels was a sideshow because it does not have much power over health matters. “The truth is that when it comes to public health, the Union has done what its member nations wanted it to do: not much,” public health expert Scott Greer wrote in the New York Times.

But what if the EU could lay down the law — literally?

The crisis has convinced many that the current setup doesn't work. More than 6,000 people, including former prime ministers, commissioners and a Parliament president, signed a petition arguing that it is time to make health a shared EU competence, and give the bloc the ability to act as a federal state in health emergencies.

Providing Brussels with more health competence — in some form at least — has also been backed by French President Emmanuel Macron and some current commissioners.

Under the health federalists’ vision, Brussels could have acted earlier and more decisively by activating an EU-wide plan to harmonize testing and unify lockdown strategies.

It would have been able to purchase masses of protective gear from the outset. (It took weeks after a health ministers meeting before the EU launched its first procurement effort.)

Brussels could have played air-traffic controller: moving medical staff to countries harder hit, and patients to countries with a greater capacity to treat them.

Such measures would mean a massive increase in power, which in turn would mean reopening EU treaties — an idea that strikes fear into the heart of even the most committed Europhile. But with scientists predicting the arrival of future pandemics, it could prove essential.

— Jillian Deutsch

… digitally transform the European Parliament.

The idea of an entirely digital European Parliament now doesn't looks so crazy.

“This crisis is showing everybody that the digital world has arrived,” said Esteban González Pons, a Spanish MEP and vice president of the conservative European People’s Party. “We are at the beginning of the digital Parliament.”

In March, Parliament President David Sassoli canceled all plenary sessions in Strasbourg until July, advised MEPs to work remotely and later introduced online voting and virtual committee meetings. The measures were unprecedented.

González Pons said that the need for MEPs to spend money on travel could be re-examined in the future, although scrapping trips to Strasbourg is “another issue," he said, as “we are obliged by the treaties.”

Other MEPs saw the experience of going entirely digital as a way to improve their relationship with the outside world.

Nathalie Loiseau, a French MEP from the centrist Renew Europe group, said she will participate in a videoconference with MPs in France, “something we had struggled to put in place in normal times.”

Daniel Freund, a Green MEP from Germany, said he had organized webinars on EU-related themes “almost every day” since the lockdown started.

But for many, tech solutions are no substitute for face-to-face business. “Technical solutions do by no means replace physical meetings and social interaction,” said German Socialist MEP Gabriele Bischoff.

Loiseau, who is also the chairwoman of the Parliament's Defense and Security Subcommittee, agrees. “Clearly, the work conditions were not optimal. Everything took twice more time, we had to call each other before a meeting to prepare, and after the meeting to debrief. It’s much less interactive.”

— Maïa de La Baume

 … turn the European Union inward.

The EU's geopolitical ambitions look increasingly likely to be a casualty of the crisis — at least in the short term.

To bolster the EU's nascent military capabilities — and hence diplomatic clout — the Commission originally proposed that the next long-term EU budget include a European Defense Fund of €13 billion, to promote military cooperation, plus a separate off-budget European Peace Facility of €10.5 billion for military operations.

But with economic survival now the priority — the International Monetary Fund expects the eurozone to contract by 7.5 percent this year — there will be urgent calls to put the bloc's money to other uses, diplomats say. "In the short term ... in a moment of economic reconstruction, the last priority will be the military one,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, a Rome-based think tank, and a special adviser to European High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell.

Geopolitical considerations will not be off the agenda forever though, she said. "In the longer term, the theme will bounce back as the U.S. and China are on a [conflicting] path ... and it’s increasingly clear that [it] is very expensive for us to be simply the battleground between the two superpowers,” said Tocci.

EU leaders stressed the bloc's "strategic autonomy" in a joint statement following their first virtual meeting in March shortly after lockdowns were imposed across Europe. That means the EU's ability to protect key assets and the goal of becoming less economically dependent on external actors such as China.

“What we have understood is that first we need to be less dependent and to have our economy back on track, then we can really play a role as a geopolitical actor,” argued a senior EU diplomat. Others are less optimistic and say that with 27 different interests to reconcile, the goal of strategic autonomy "could take decades to become real” according to a second senior EU diplomat.

— Jacopo Barigazzi

... break the euro — or make it stronger.

Since creating the euro, European leaders have dreamed that their shared currency will one day rival the almighty dollar.

The previous European Commission drew up a battle plan to use the euro as a counter to the U.S., whose stranglehold over dollar-denominated trade in commodities like oil lets it run unilateral policies such as sanctions on Iran — and impose fines on EU banks for violating them.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has also taken up the challenge, mandating Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis to make the euro a “strategic asset for our Union.”

“This will include increasing the global use of the euro for payments, as a reserve currency and for debt issuance,” she wrote in his mission letter.

For that to happen, however, Europe will need strong economic growth, said Guntram Wolf, the director of the Brussels think tank Bruegel. Instead, the Continent is on course for its biggest decline since the Great Depression.

“No one wants to invest in your economy if there’s no growth,” Wolf said, stressing the importance of the EU crafting an economic recovery fund. “The growth story is really, really important.”

Even if growth comes back strong, the euro club is lacking a safe asset for investors to buy, equivalent to U.S. Treasury securities. Northern European countries have repeatedly spurned the idea of shared euro bonds for fear that their taxpayers would be on the hook for the debt of supposedly profligate southern countries.

If the crisis doesn't end up breaking the euro, then there is hope, said Wolf. “If we can pick out a proper growth strategy and issue some joint debt, which would be sustainable on the side of stronger and weaker countries, then the EU can get out of the crisis strengthened — not weakened."

— Bjarke Smith-Meyer

... make experts great again.

One of the shared characteristics of the populist movements that, in their various incarnations, came to prominence in the past decade was a deliberate fostering of mistrust in established, academic, informed opinion.

Who needs people who have studied a subject for years when you have a “very stable genius” in the White House? Or when the U.K. public has “had enough of experts”?

The coronavirus may have changed that.

It’s not just the sight of some those same populist figureheads now being flanked by their expert officials at daily press conferences. Scientists warned for years that a pandemic like this was not only possible but probable. Politicians concerned with the daily cut and thrust did not pay enough attention. They will now.

“After the COVID crisis, it’s reasonable,” wrote former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney in the Economist, “to expect people to demand … more heed to be given to the advice of scientific experts.”

In Carney’s view, “the great test” of whether a new attitude really prevails will be climate change — governments either mitigate in advance or people will suffer down the line. There is no social distancing from a heating climate.

Frank Snowden, a history of medicine professor who specializes in how epidemics change society, agrees. “It seems to me essential, desirable and good economics, politics and morals to go about stimulating the economy in ways that are sustainable in the long term; a green economy,” he said. “That would protect our planet and protect our health — and put people back to work.”

Who needs experts? Turns out we all do.

— Charlie Cooper

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