In the US, the initial bailout for passenger airlines has been set at 25 billion dollars.

These same airlines spent 45 billion dollars on stock buybacks over the past five years.

Strict conditions on aviation emissions reductions were removed from the final version of the bailout.

Where I come from, this is called, Not learning from your mistakes.

As the climate kerfuffle looms like a horror shitshow on the backside of the coronavirus pandemic, it would be nice to think some people are imagining a “better world” that could follow after the coronacollapse.

I know I am.

I estimate I have about 1% of the world’s population with me on this one.

*

I’m currently locked down in New Zealand, one of the worlds most selfish and least self-aware countries. It’s very much a society of Me! Me! Me!, freeDumb, and high per capita CO2 emissions.

It’s also geographically far away from the rest of the planet with a relatively small population. The temptation is overwhelming here to pretend that our emissions “don’t matter”, our way of life is “good”, exporting massive amounts of meat and dairy overseas is “necessary for our economy”, and importing four million tourists a year to gape at the “untouched nature” is “vital”.

And so on.

Basically, New Zealand is a late-stage Capitalist habitat-destroying CO2-spewing consumer society with much too much riding on “business as usual” to take a good hard look in the mirror.

However…

New Zealand locked down early, decapitating the exponential corona nightmare in its tracks, meaning it may be one of the first countries to experiment with post-first-wave reopening of businesses and society.

Let’s not pretend that the 99% reality here will be anything other than winding the clock back up to Go! Drive! Work! Consume! Pollute! as quickly as possible. After all, all those who have lost their jobs want them back quick snap! Which is totally understandable.

So is there a silver lining in the other 1% reality?

The tourism industry here has been pushed into that 1% zone simply because the ongoing mess in the rest of the world—and in particular the great chunks of it that funnel tourists to New Zealand—means that they can’t quickly get back to business as usual, even if they want to!

They are therefore getting a chance to imagine, “What happens next?” despite plentiful grinding of teeth.

And that imagining is happening. Tourism New Zealand is leading plans to radically change their approach to the visitor industry. Kelvin Davis, head of Tourism New Zealand:

“We have an opportunity to rethink the entire way we approach tourism to ensure that it will make New Zealand a more sustainable place, enrich the lives of all our people and deliver a sector which is financially self-sustaining in the longer term:”

Less tourists but staying for longer would be a good start. In the last ten years, the number of tourists coming to New Zealand has approximately doubled. New Zealand was still a fully-functioning country in 2010; surely it can survive just fine with half as many tourists.

(However, in that time, government policy has allowed the country’s population to increase by half a million, some of whom got jobs in this expanded tourism industry—which will no longer exist. You can go down a Capitalist population growth jobs rabbit hole here if you want. It’s messy.)

A former general manager of Tourism New Zealand, Cas Carter, wrote this piece about a fantasy tourism future for New Zealand.

“The fancy attractions with the $100 plus entry tag had to rethink their pricing strategy to attract New Zealanders.

“They had to reconsider what they were offering too. For example, the 'hāngi and show' Māori tourism product was remodeled for Kiwis seeking an authentic, immersive language and culture learning experience”.

And:

“Despite private sectors gasps, the Government put a two million per annum cap on international visitors with special allowances for those visiting friends and relatives.

“Tourism operators who had been focused on volume-based revenue either quickly pivoted to meet the high-end visitor market or disappeared.

“Some moved into marketing environmental based products that supported a rejuvenated 100 per cent Pure New Zealand brand.”

The sky’s the limit when coronavirus gives you a chance to dream.

Take that chance.