WORLD : PROFITS! TO PRODUCE?

BUT if you think companies profiting off the coronavirus is bad, wait until the climate crises worsens. Beyond even novel outbreaks like Covid-19, more familiar health threats are set to spread like wildfire.

Already hotter temperatures are increasing the rate heat strokes and heat exhaustion, while expanding the range of diseases like malaria or West Nile virus.

Droughts spread food insecurity, wildfires cause respiratory illnesses, and floods expose people to unsanitary conditions.

A sick planet, in short, mean a sick public.

AND, as Naomi Klein and other journalists have reported, corporations have devised a number of ways to profit off our planet's sickness - from companies patenting ''climate ready'' crops to property insurance companies contracting private firefighters for rich clients in the path of wildfires.

One of the biggest beneficiaries, again, is Big Pharma. According to the European Pharmaceutical Review [EPR], the pharmaceutical industry expects to ''benefit from warming planet'' as the spread of the disease will become more prevalent, revealing opportunities for medicine markets.

Even before coronavirus was a household name, the EPR estimated that between 385 and 725 million people worldwide will be exposed to the infectious diseases as the climate crisis worsens.

No wonder they find that ''almost 70 percent of biotech, healthcare and pharma companies have climate change into their business strategy.''

According to Morgan Stanley $50 to $100 billion will be needed to produce vaccines alone in the coming years.

Unfortunately, many pharmaceutical giants are investing in reducing access to these medications, Pfizer, J&J, and Merck Co together spent over $19 billion in 2019 alone on lobbying efforts to keep prescription drug and health care costs high - and thus inaccessible to many vulnerable communities.

[Excerpted from : If You think Coronavirus Profiteering is Bad, Wait Till the Climate Heats Up.]

The World Students Society thanks author Josue De Luna Navarro.