CHAPTER SEVEN

The pandemic and the livability of cities  

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In 2020, the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) has upset everyday routines in a dramatic way and has challenged established assumptions about the economy and prospects of living in big cities.  How do these developments affect the concepts adopted in this book? 

COVID-19 is the first pandemic in recorded human history to involve practically the entire population of the planet.  With over 50 million confirmed infections and a world-wide death toll surpassing one million by November 2020, it has instilled a pervasive sense of insecurity in all domains of human activity.

The COVID-19 pandemic, as declared by the World Health Organization in February 2020, first appeared in Wuhan, a Chinese city of 11 million, and now especially affects densely populated cities around the world, cities which are considered engines of national economy. A great deal has been learned during the first months of the pandemic about how the virus spreads and how it affects the human body. New treatment procedures have been instituted that have significantly improved survival rates, yet the uncertainty of its persistence remains significant. Pandemic cases are still rapidly rising in Brazil, India, and Mexico, among others, while in the US the death count approached 240,000 by November 2020.  At times it feels like the hopes for a good life in the “big cities” have been dashed.

The medical community seems to agree that the pandemic will not run its course without implementing continuous social distancing, face mask usage, and rigorous hygiene until an effective vaccine is found.  There are two general approaches in the development of vaccines and other medications to fight the virus: one is aimed at preventing the virus from entering the nucleus of the cell where it would multiply, the other is focused on strengthening the immune system of the body so that it could destroy the invading virus before it is able to inflict any damage.  A massive effort expected to significantly shorten the bringing to market of any vaccines (a process that normally takes up to a decade) has led to about a dozen under development to reach stage three of testing—the last stage before approval for common use; yet the end result still remains unpredictable.  At present, attempts to contain the spread of the virus in the community are

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The impact of the pandemic

The pandemic has weighed heavily on Canada.  Virtually all spheres of life in Toronto and other large cities have been affected.  People continue getting sick and too often dying, with a total loss of life in Canada now over ten thousand as of October, 2020.  About three quarters of the deceased were over 80 or had a compromised immune system.  Already over 250,000 Canadians have been diagnosed with the virus and subject to quarantine. Yet many younger people with asymptomatic infections have largely gone undetected and are possibly contributing to the spread of the virus.  Due to enforced isolation and various forms of lock-down, many healthy people are under great stress that is increased by doubts whether they will be able to return to work and secure a livelihood for themselves and their families.  New measures instituted by the authorities to contain the spread of the virus have occasionally been met with resistance with ensuing demonstrations or lack of compliance.

Since a large portion of the population is now required to work from home, universal broadband internet access for businesses and households has increased in importance. Most government services, as well as doctors’ offices, have become exclusively available online.  In addition, educational institutions, schools, and universities, have taken recourse to online teaching. Ubiquitous online access to information and learning has become a basic requirement for maintaining economic activities.

Apart from the physical component, a sense of psychological well-being depends on the social relations that constitute an important part of a person’s everyday life, normally provided by the family, friends and co-workers.  Social distancing during the pandemic, especially during lock-downs, can cause a sense of extreme isolation especially among people who already live by themselves, whether young or elderly, and who rely on external contacts for social support.  Face-to-face interaction, both in the workplace and in the community, is increasingly being replaced by virtual online contacts encouraged by improved digital technologies.  As a result, social isolation is taking a toll on the mental health of a large section of the population.

There has been a great loss of jobs during the lock-downs and their aftermath, as many businesses have gone under.  Toronto and Mississauga have suffered heavy loss of employment due to closed factories, restaurants and bars, empty hotels, and cancelled large international festivals, causing major shortfalls to each city’s income (a similar fate befell Tokyo and the postponed Olympics planned for 2020).  Due to the closed border with the US, limited travel is affecting both the aviation industry and tourism.  Passenger flights have been decimated and Pearson International Airport, a major employer in Mississauga, remains mostly idle. A measure of the continuing challenges in Canadian aviation is Bombardier’s intention to sell its last assets in commercial aerospace and completely withdraw from producing its commercial planes.  Bombardier’s CEO Éric Martel has announced his decision to sell its facilities in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Mexico and Texas by end of the year 2020, and concentrate exclusively on its luxury private jets1.

Governments at all levels are attempting to counteract the heavy loss of income by providing massive aid packages in order to prevent people from becoming destitute, with an ensuing federal budget deficit not seen since WWII.  On July 8, 2020, then Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau tabled a fiscal snapshot of the financial situation that showed that the federal government's deficit was expected to reach $343 billion for the year.

Despite gradual opening of businesses and workplaces, subways and buses are utilized at a fraction of capacity. This is a drastic reversal of the situation before the pandemic, when insufficient means of public transportation were perceived as a major drawback in crowded cities and on congested highways.  At present many planned costly investment projects will be delayed or abandoned.  The building of the LRT in Mississauga has slowed to a crawl, plans to build a subway relief line in Toronto have been suspended, and Google's Sidewalk Labs has given up on the idea of building a high-tech “smart city” neighbourhood on the Toronto waterfront.

The shock to the economy forces people to rethink the basic tenets of life in big cities and to accelerate changes previously deemed inevitable but relegated to a lower priority.  For example, the restrictions due to the pandemic have caused changing commuter patterns.  Many employees are encouraged to work from home, while others, to avoid infection, opt for automobiles or bicycles. Those working from home can avoid the commute altogether and many are considering moving to the suburbs to save on housing expenses.  The decreased commute levels are having a ripple-effect on taxi fares, restaurant visits and other services in the downtown areas.

Facing the increased popularity of cycling, the mayor of Toronto, John Tory, has welcomed city initiatives to facilitate bike use and to reserve parts of some roadways for that purpose.  As the Globe and Mail reported, “it was an instant hit… On Lake Shore West – where the eastbound lanes were closed to traffic… an average of 18,000 people on bikes and 4,000 pedestrians enjoyed the space over the course of a day on summer weekends…A closing of eastbound lanes on Beach Avenue along English Bay – all week long – saw an average of 8,000 bike trips a day in late summer… People have savoured reimagined public spaces, from new plazas, to street patios previously reserved for parked cars, to a web of new bike lanes, to major roads closed to cars on weekends.”2

As for the labour market, the loss of jobs has impacted mostly the service sector, those casual positions with the greatest economic insecurity.  The pandemic is affecting people who cannot work from home, and who may not be able to commute by automobile to distant locations; many are working in the hospitality and food industry low paying service jobs that are eliminated first.  Some of these workers may not be entitled to unemployment benefits or paid sick leave, and thus may be inclined to show up at work even if infected with the virus.

Businesses faced with temporary shortage of workers may decide to further automate, with irreversible effects on the post-pandemic labour market.  A survey conducted by McKinsey & Company found that because of COVID-19 many businesses have already sped up the adoption of digital technologies by several years.3  Automation may also be in store for the low paid personal support workers in medical establishments, especially in long-term care homes, where both the hiring of new staff and workers’ salaries will have to be raised to avoid acute personnel shortages.  As discussed earlier in the book, automation is also being accelerated by developments in high-technology and Artificial Intelligence.  Consequently, the lower skilled workers who lose jobs during the pandemic might have difficulty adjusting to the novel conditions and become permanently unemployed.

As for the urban environment, the effects of continuing climate change have become aggravated during the pandemic.  Although the reduced traffic during the lock-downs initially seemed to alleviate levels of air pollution, it soon returned to previous concentrations with the lifting of the lockdowns.  Closing public institutions at the height of the summer heatwaves exacerbated the situation for people who did not have air conditioning at home and thus lost the chance to cool off at shopping malls or libraries.  Particularly affected were homeless people in the city, whose numbers are estimated to be about ten thousand in Toronto.  Many lost access to such basic resources as drinking water, public washrooms, or shelter during inclement weather.  At a considerable cost to the municipal budget, the City of Toronto moved about three thousand homeless people to hotels and other temporary lodgings.  Plans to accelerate building of affordable housing however will be weighed against the increasing debt burdens at all levels of government.

The pandemic is forcing authorities to address the exacerbated poverty in the cities.  The already impoverished who lose employment are especially faced with food insecurity and the risk of being evicted from their rental housing.  The foodbanks in Mississauga and nearby Brampton have been besieged by twice the number of needy people compared to previous years.  The Mayor of Mississauga, Bonnie Crombie, announced on 5 October 2020 that the “Mississauga Food Bank has seen 138% increase of first-time support.” 4

A special group of underprivileged people are the elderly residents of long-term support homes, where previously undisclosed apalling conditions became a public disgrace laid bare by the pandemic.  Reforming those institutions will require not only increased budgets, but also a demonstrated appreciation for the support workers who are bearing the brunt of the pandemic’s effects.

In the US, persistent poverty and hopelessness in the deindustrialized cities have given rise to “the diseases of desperation”, such as substance abuse, violence in families, and suicide. These economic impacts on local communities have been thoroughly analyzed by Joseph Stieglitz, the former chief economist of the World Bank and Nobel laureate, in his latest book People, Power, and Profits, 2019.5  In Canada, the epidemic of drug overdoses has caused a larger death toll than the pandemic. 6

COVID-19 has become a catalytic factor in widespread demonstrations and random acts of destruction among the Blacks in the US who are disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and subject to systemic injustice.  The waves of antiracism protests in the US, as well as in Canada, have been triggered by incidents of police violence against Blacks and Natives.

Addressing the rising poverty rates at the policy level requires dealing with the income polarization that has been promoted by liberal economic ideas especially pronounced in the US in the last decades. In this regard, Stieglitz postulates instituting democratic transparency and supervision of the financial institutions whose dysfunctions triggered a near collapse of the banking system and massive bankruptcies in 2007.7  Equally needed is a democratic oversight of large corporations whose power over individual consumers is excessive and where top managers accord themselves disproportionate benefits.8  Among other reforms, a tightening of taxation rules is necessary to prevent tax evasion and avoidance by the top income cohort, often known for taking shelter in tax havens abroad. These reforms would also require making provisions for an aging society, the shrinking labour market, and the decreasing tax base.

The pandemic-induced economic problems are tied into destabilizing macroeconomic processes prevailing in the last decade.  For years, a troubling trend has continued in the form of decoupling of rising stock prices from the deteriorating overall economic outlook.  After an exceptionally long stretch of eleven years of bull markets, there is a growing risk of another financial meltdown.9

A constant concern remains regarding the stratospheric federal budget deficits and the current deep recession.  The deficits are considered tolerable as long as interest rates remain near zero and below the growth rate.  Still, even before the pandemic, the long term economic growth rate was expected to remain low around the globe, not exceeding 1.5% until 2050.  At present the risk of deflation is considered to be larger than the risk of inflation as falling prices are the result of low demand and low incomes for both businesses and individuals.  Deflation increases debt burdens while it also increases the purchasing power of moneyed people.  Japan has already been struggling with low growth rates and a risk of deflation for decades.  Still, the rapidly rising budget deficits pose the question of how long deficits can keep growing before they trigger inflation.  The lessons of hyperinflation of the 1920s in Germany have not been forgotten and high inflation in today’s oil rich Venezuela remains a stark reminder.

Of further concern is that the generally accepted measurement of economic health, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is no longer a valid indicator of the well being of the population because it does not reflect income polarization nor costs of production in the form of environmental degradation that will weigh heavily on the next generations.  While the GDP in the US in the last decades was on the rise, the fact remained that most of its increase was accumulated by the super-rich while the bottom half of the population experienced only marginal benefits. About three quarters of the accumulation of wealth in the first decade of the 2000s went to 1% of the richest, of which roughly half went to “the 0.1 percent”, those making more than $1.5 million a year.10  The smassive US tax cut of 2017 only exacerbated that process.  Although to a lower degree, Canada has experienced a similar process.

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The future of globalization

The pandemic lay bare the fact that Canada and other Western countries had become dependent on Chinese pharmaceuticals and medical supplies that were difficult to obtain from elsewhere. As China went into a lock-down, it stopped supplying a wide range of components to manufacturers worldwide, which interrupted production in their countries even before they were affected by the pandemic.  The West had become dependent on multiple and extended supply chains indispensable for the manufacturing process.

That dependence coincides with the growing rivalry between US and China as a consequence of which the US administration has imposed tariffs on imports to protect their domestic manufacturing base, which in turn were reciprocated by Chinese tariffs. The worsening trade relations are also limiting Canadian imports, such as the 5G broadband mobile internet components, and exports that are affecting Canada’s trade balance.  Likewise, increasing protectionist tendencies in the US are complicating trade with Canada.  Both the US and Canada are looking at options to shorten their supply chains—the multiple crossborder shipping of raw materials and components for the final products—that are all impacted by the new tariffs and customs regulations.

Economists stress that protectionist measures interrupt international trade and affect the countries involved by increasing costs of domestic production and by undermining profits of their own transnational companies. The rising tensions put the future of international cooperation in doubt and even pose questions about the demise of globalization. Britain voting to leave the European Union (Brexit) epitomizes this current ambivalence toward globalization.  However, a parallel view has been maintained that the economic forces underlying globalization worldwide will just reshape it rather than give way to pressures from protectionism, because the structure of the economy has already undergone deep transformation.  Due to accelerated technological change in the last decade, the manufacturing base in the advanced economies has further shrunk while the services, which comprise 80-90% of the workforce, have grown to become the dominant contributor to the country’s GDP.  Because of advances in automation, protectionist measures will not improve domestic employment in manufacturing.

At the same time the economic impact of the pandemic has shown that remote provision of services is in many ways feasible.  An increasing amount of office work can now be carried out from home or from any location within the country or even from abroad.  The term “telecommuting” describes work performed from locations where distance does not come into consideration.  Similarly to IT services and call centres that are already located in other countries, the trend will increasingly provide competition from overseas specialists in ever wider ranges of services. In a service based economy the losses due to shrinking production of goods can be compensated for by more trade in digital services.  Globalization of services will continue to pose new challenges to the advanced economies.

To avoid the tensions with the increasingly assertive China, international trade will be reshaped geographically. The post-pandemic recovery is likely to see trade gradually shift from East-West links to North-South routes, and thus be less exposed to the dominating market position of China. The US and Canada have already intensified regional exchanges with Mexico and South American countries.

The local labour market will also be disrupted by the intelligent digital devices that will increasingly take over tasks of white collar jobs, starting with those that are easier to automate. Richard Baldwin of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva speaks of a new wave of rapid economic transformation taking place over the last few years, induced by the new digital technologies. As machine learning takes off, a new generation of robots is increasingly capable of taking on any work performed by humans, not just physical labour but also all kind of office work.11  Thus, a nurse assisted by digital devices providing access to all needed medical information will be able to take on many tasks originally performed by physicians.  Although the physician’s job will not be eliminated, it will be deeply transformed.  While only a portion of the tasks performed by professionals will be affected, many more tasks of lower skilled workers will be automated, with accompanying large job losses in those employment categories. In the long run advances in digitization may bring about significant[PS1]  efficiencies and increase in wealth of the country, but in the nearer perspective they will stoke discontent in the labour force and a backlash might then be expected. In contrast to previous centuries, when industrialization and globalization upset the lives of farm and factory workers, this transformation will also affect white-collar workers with rapid and more widespread disruptions to their lives. The current pandemic will only deepen the dual impact of telecommuting and intelligent automation that has been under way in recent years.

The expected large scale transformation of the future labour market especially poses challenges to education so that the forms of the emerging jobs of the future is not possible to foresee.  It is only safe to assume that continuing education and its great flexibility will be indispensable for new entrants to the labour force as well as those in their mid careers.

Because of the expected widespread disruptions that the new technologies will trigger, Baldwin thinks that the globalizing transformations may need to be slowed down to enable the society to make necessary adjustments.12  The full potential of the new technologies will not be utilized because of resistance from the sectors of society negatively affected by them. A range of social policy measures need to be undertaken to counter the destabilizing effects of digital automation.

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The future with COVID-19

While the course of dealing with the pandemic in the tenth month after its declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) remains unclear, there are various scenarios to consider depending on which factors come to the fore.  A partially optimistic view envisions vaccines eliminating the most acute phase in 2021/22. Yet even then their effectiveness may be limited by the fact that part of the asymptomatic population may not undergo immunization due to anti-vaccine prejudice and thus potentially remain infectious.

The recovery, likely only a partial one, and dubbed the 90% economy by the Economist on September 16, 2020, will be according to their view, “more fragile…less innovative… and …more unfair”.13  Many workers will not have their old jobs to return to.  Firms reluctant to invest will have less productive capital in the future and will be less willing to risk innovation. Government debt will continue to rise with decreased revenues but increased expenses for support programs for the needy. 

Yet, despite those reservations, there are optimistic entrepreneurs ready to invest. Close to the Mississauga Pearson Airport work has started on building the Regal Plaza Corporate Centre, with an 11-storey hotel and 150 retail and office condo units, to be ready for the expected recovery in 2023.

On a global scale, the recovery remains uneven: while most sectors of the economy suffer great losses, sectors associated with internet services  experience unprecedented growth. In May 2020 Bloomberg announced Shopify as the most valuable Canadian company14.  Following a surge in online-shopping, Amazon announced a consecutive hiring spree for 100 thousand positions, many of those jobs scheduled to be located in Toronto and Mississauga.15

A less favourable scenario of pandemic consequences envisions overlapping negative factors: the discovery of an effective vaccine and scaling up its production extends beyond 2022.  Canada is then stuck in a recession, and prices in the stock market and real estate plunge, depleting the reserves of both individuals and businesses.  Unemployment and social tensions increase because jobs are not returning due to accelerating automation.  Pensions and old age support programs are running out of funding because of increased demand from an aging population. The continuous growth rate that was expected to alleviate the national debt does not materialize as it is thwarted by a worldwide recession.  In addition, an accelerating climate change is hampering growth due to the increased frequencies of heatwaves, catastrophic droughts, large scale fires, hurricanes, and floods, as well as the pollution of air, water, and soil.  Thus, the necessary proactive plans are delayed by the pandemic.

To prevent the most acute effects of climate change, according to Nicholas Stern, the author of the widely discussed British Review, significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are necessary.  Already back in 2006 he wrote: "[I]f we don't act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever”.16  Postponing remedial action increases unavoidable expenses in the future. We may add that a coordinated plan to avoid runaway climate change should also involve an educational effort to make the population at large aware of the high stakes involved.

Stieglitz comments often on the need to deal with the consequences of the pandemic and climate change. In order to improve the condition of the unemployed, and in contrast to a universal basic income postulated by some, he argues in favour of universal access to employment that should be the governments’ mandate:  “Tax the big tech companies and employ teachers and nurses, and … there is so much to be done where other people could be employed.”17

 

A note on Renewables

As previously noted, the pandemic has cast light on environmental issues and related climate change. Concentrated air pollution in cities weakens human immune system and increases morbidity. Climate change affects disproportionately the most poverty stricken populations within the country and around the globe.

While counteracting climate change requires adjustments on many fronts, perhaps the most discussed one remains air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels.  McKinsey & Co.’s researchers warn about the ensuing climate warming.  An average temperature rising “above 1.5 or 2° C would create risks that the global economy is not prepared to weather. At an emission rate of 40 to 50 gigatons of CO2 per year, the global economy has ten to 25 years of carbon capacity left”.18

In this regard the last few years have seen some positive developments in clean energy technologies that may reduce the damage to the environment caused by the fossil-fuel driven economy. The price of electricity derived from wind and solar farms has dropped dramatically and in many ways is already competitive with that produced by coal and gas fired power plants, including nuclear.  Especially the wind turbines, once shunned by property owners, have increased in demand.  The promise of royalties in Texas, a traditionally oil producing state, has convinced farmers to give access to them.  At peak performance now over half of Texas’s electricity is being supplied by the turbines. Together with Kansas and Oklahoma the three states are generating a fast growing employment in servicing their wind and solar farms.19

Among the numerous countries developing renewable energy technologies, China remains at the forefront, particularly in the production of low cost solar panels. Increased competition leaves it unwilling to share with other countries the supplies needed for their own green energy technologies, including rare minerals for electric batteries and other electronic devices.

Abundant renewable energy is a basic requirement for the “clean” electric vehicles (EVs) that soon will be coming on the market on a large scale. According to the World Economic Forum, in September 2020 more than 60% of all new cars sold in Norway were EVs. That country is aiming to switch fully to zero emission cars by 2025.

An early propagator of EVs, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, remains at the forefront of the development of electric vehicles.20  Musk hopes to develop a “million mile” battery that could last an electric car’s lifetime and to offer $25,000 EVs as soon as 2023. Tesla’s rapidly built new factory in Shanghai began shipping in December 2019 and other “gigafactories” are under construction in Texas and Berlin which will boost capacity from 700,000 units to 1.3 million in 18 months.  In July 2020, Tesla overtook Toyota as the world’s most valuable carmaker.21  Virtually all large car companies are now working on EVs and their share worldwide may rise to 20-25% by 2030, equal to 20 million new EVs launched annually.

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A World Wide Grid

Work continues on solving the intermittency problems of the renewables.  California, which has come to rely on clean energy after prematurely closing its coal fired power plants, has been plagued by rolling blackouts during peak demand.  To ensure delivery of electricity from other states an integrated power grid is postulated.  One way to approach the problem is the construction of long distance transmission lines with low power loss due to conversion from Alternating Current (AC) to a much more efficient Direct Current (DC).  As research on optimizing power grids progresses, integrated electricity grids, spanning multiple time zones in the US and Canada, are suggested, possibly also across countries, even continents – after all, the sun is always shining somewhere, and winds are blowing as well.  According to Vancouver’s Michael Barnard, the editor of The Future is Electric, High Voltage Direct Current cables, a kind of an electrical superhighway spanning the North Pole, could secure renewable energy supply on a global scale22.  And locally the many EV batteries in use may also serve as short term storage backups during down times of solar farms and wind turbines.

Likewise, oil companies, which are facing competition from low cost and high demand electricity generated by solar and wind farms, are slowly accepting the idea that decarbonising might be an economic opportunity for them. Long term plans of the largest oil companies, such as British Petroleum and Shell, envision an increased mix of renewables in their portfolios.

There is a growing recognition around the world that the fossil fuels that were the driving force of the industrial revolution are nearing the end of their lifecycle and that the transition to green power remains the order of the day. 

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Continuing the journey

When we consider a livable city as an urban environment where people can secure their livelihood, socialize and pursue individual goals, all the economic, social, and environmental factors remain an essential part of the discussion. But for now we must realize that the concept of a livable city during the pandemic has taken on a completely new meaning, where the prime focus is just to stay alive by conforming to strict precautionary measures with the hope of attaining a “new normal” in the future.  Instead of trying to eradicate the virus we may have to learn to live with it. We[PS2]  are reminded that viruses in the recent epidemics were of animal origin, and new outbreaks may be unavoidable.  Growing populations worldwide have caused increased contacts with wildlife and increased mobility contributes to large scale spread of infections.  For this reason, funding for basic research and provision for the emergencies of new outbreaks must be continued for the foreseeable future.

The shock of the pandemic makes us realize anew that our biosphere is a unique space capsule and that we all need to rely on each other to survive and continue the journey.

 

 

References:

1.  Van Praet, Nicolas. (2020  October 27).  Bombardier to close deal with Spirit. The Globe and Mail.  

2.  The pandemic changed Toronto’s streets. (2020 October 1). The Globe and Mail.

3.  McKinsey and Company.   Survey of October 5, 2020.

4.  Pecar, Steve. (2020 September 28). Mississauga Foodbank sees large increase in first time users. insauga.   

5.  Stieglitz, Joseph. (2019). People, Power, and Profits. Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent.  Columbia University.

6.  According to Government of Canada data 16,364 apparent opioid-related deaths occurred between January 2016 and March 2020.  Opioid-related harms in Canada. (September 2020). health-infobase.canada.ca.

7.  Stieglitz (2019).

8.  (ibid.)

9.  CBS News. (2020) March, 12.

10. Piketty, Thomas. (2014).  The Capital in the 21st century, Translated by Arthur Goldhammer.  The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England,  p. 211

11. Baldwin, R. (2019.) The Globotics Upheaval: Globalization, Robotics, and the Future of Work.  Orion Publishing Group, Limited.

12. Ibid.

13. The Economist. (2020 September 16).

14. Balji, Divya and Alexander, Doug.  (2020 May 6). As Shopify Passes RBC, Canada Market Curse Gets Put to Test.  bloomberg.com

15. Dastin, Jeffrey. (2020 September 14). Amazon hiring 100,000 new workers in Canada and U.S. to keep pace with e-commerce surge. The Globe and Mail.

16. Stern, Nicholas.  (2007). The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

17. Post-COVID-19 Economy. Interview of May 21, 2020.

18. Addressing climate change in a post-pandemic world. (2020 April). McKinsey Quarterly.

19. A renewable-energy boom is changing the politics of global warming. (2020 March 14).  The Economist.  

20. Who will rule the Teslaverse? (2020 September 17). The Economist.

21.  (ibid.)

22. Barnard, Michael.  (2018 September 14). Future of electricity transmission is HVDC. High-voltage direct current transmission enables continental and larger grids.  medium.com

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