https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/07/we-are-living-through-the-first-economic-crisis-of-the-anthropocene

Forget the butterfly effect, this is the bat effect – our stranglehold on nature has unleashed the coronavirus outbreak. And the pandemic is forcing us to rethink how to run our networked world

Every April, Washington DC plays host to the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank. But last month, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva addressed her colleagues on video. The world was facing, she declared, a “crisis like no other”. For the first time since records began, the entire world economy is contracting, rich and poor countries alike.

But it is not just the immediate impact that makes this economic crisis unprecedented. It is its genesis. This isn’t 2008, which was triggered by a meltdown of North Atlantic banking. And it isn’t the 1930s; an earthquake that originated in the fault lines left by the first world war. The Covid-19 economic emergency of 2020 is the result of a massive global effort to contain an unknown and lethal disease. It is both a surprising demonstration of our collective power to stop the economy and a shocking reminder that our control of nature, on which modern life rests, is more fragile than we like to think. What we are living through is the first economic crisis of the Anthropocene.