We live in interesting times. How many times have you heard that said – not least on these pages? But we might yet still be in agreement that they just got a whole lot more interesting.

As we write, the Coronavirus is dominating the news headlines every day. On the one hand it is shaping up to be a pandemic of an illness akin to flu. The social media rages with debates on whether or not we should be afraid, since the vast majority of people would only suffer mild symptoms if they caught it – no different from previous prospects offered by a seasonal disorder. (Did you know that a range of 12,000 to 30,000 people are suspected to have died of flu in the US between October and February this year? 15 deaths in the UK over 9 weeks).

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And what about the outrage of the everyday deaths of hundreds of thousands of people due to the infinitely more avoidable effects of climate change. They never make it to the front pages of a media owned by the beneficiaries of the growth economy.

On the other hand, one of the results of this outbreak seems to be a series of breakdowns in the very same growth economy. Trillions of dolars have been wiped off the stock markets. Airlines have been grounded and, in one case already, forced into liquidation. Global conferences and sports events have been cancelled. The cloud of black pollution hanging over Beijing has all but disappeared in a relatively short time. Carbon levels are dropping noticeably in the biggest cities affected.

If this was a Marvel comic, it might be portrayed as The Revenge of Gaia.

Of course, there is no simple cause and effect to point at here – it’s a complex web of consequences that tie the outbreak of Covid-19 to this shift in our carbon levels. Nor is it a simple plus point – nothing ever is. There’s an issue of the millions of platelets – found in the atmosphere of petrol-fuelled cities – providing a layer of protection from the sun. What happens if that disappears suddenly – will we be suddenly exposed to heat and harmful rays never before experienced? And of course, people losing their livelihoods is not something to wish for without an insurance plan in place.

But what if there was an insurance plan in place? Extinction Rebellion’s handbook on the climate crisis, called This Is Not A Drill, warns of the ten-year window we have to halt the climate emergency, in which we can’t afford to be complacent. Yet, as Greta Thunberg keeps pointing out, there is very little evidence that the penny is dropping: not much has changed since she first began her global campaign.

So maybe the coronavirus is a drill? Our chance to observe the impact of the sudden disruption of our major infrastructures and supply chains? An opportunity to watch the reactions of the media, the politicians, each other - ourselves – to what appears to be accepted as a global level emergency, for this moment at least. What do we see?

One unpredicted consequence is that in China, where the pandemic started, there has been a widely reported loss of trust in the government. In particular, evidence that there were early whistle-blowers whose alarms were supressed – one of whom later died of the virus – has led to widely reported unrest amongst the people of Wuhan.

As an equally unpredictable corollary, the young people of Hong Kong who, until now, saw their mainland counterparts as passive citizens, are now identifying with the plight of the Wuhan people and actively communicating their support. This may not amount to much in itself, but it describes a small r-evolution in political agency, taking place in one part of the world, that may have ripple effects well beyond that region.

Something similar may be happening in the UK, where the government’s lack of response over the recent floods caused widespread anger. Moreover, uncertainty about whether or not our regular buildings insurance policies was adequate to cover these environmental disruptions has sent shock waves through the system. How will this incremental loss of trust in the public safety net impact our wider society?

One possible result may be that more people will feel the need to become more self-sufficient in the face of the future. At the extreme end – a phenomenon we see playing out in the USA – people might stockpile resources and dig bunkers to protect themselves against social breakdown.

But a more measured approach would be to develop greater autonomy in which more people find ways to take responsibility for the resilience of their local community. If you look at the work of Transition Towns, Permaculture, the co-operative and communing movements, you would say that is already happening and ripe for acceleration.

From that perspective, the ten-year window is a decent amount of time to rise to the task. Imagine if, from today, everyone (not just the usual suspects) started to think actively about the needs of the town or city they lived in? Not simply as a demand to the national government (which should continue) but as a challenge to our own capacity and ingenuity?

We should do this partly to rise to Greta Thunberg’s challenge of “what will you tell your children that you were doing at this time of crisis?” But also partly because when you see the building is burning and you don’t have any fire extinguishers, it’s best to get quickly organised. Are you going to set some snap rules around the use of the fire escape to that no-one dies in the scrum? Or is there still a way to put the fire out?

Different people will have different responses to such an urgency – and that’s a plus. Simple actions need to take place in a bigger system of actions that together add up to stronger communities.

What resources of food, energy and medicine can we make available from where we are? Not simply from what we can grow today but also what we can learn from the world and plan to grow – or make – tomorrow?

What kinds of buildings, materials and tools can be repurposed so that we shift from creating excess to creating what we need to thrive independently. What new kinds of markets could appear to draw attention to what is being produced locally?

What do we call a local economy (whether regional, city or town) that prioritises our common purpose and our ability to participate in it? Can we trade our skills and time in ways that don’t rely on banks or profit motives to keep them going? Can a social enterprise culture convert what was once volunteering into decent, sustainable livelihoods? Of course, so much of this is already present in a nascent 4th sector economy – so what does it need to leap forward now?

Maybe more importantly, how do we look after the emotional needs of a discombobulated citizenry? What sorts of community spaces need to be opened for honest dialogue and creative imagination? What local media can we develop that pays attention to the solutions already available to us and the plethora of initiatives starting up each day? How can we share all this as energy and spirit for the future – make it irresistible?

In this past week, we have begun to explore all of these questions within the newly launched Action Forum of The Alternative UK. If you haven’t had a look yet, there are six mutually inclusive paths to a different future. In other words, although there are six different entry points, each implies the other five within them. Integrating them is what brings forth a new system of change.

Although we have only done a very soft launch to our pre-existing co-creators group of 300 people, there has been lots of activity in the form of suggested projects and setting direction. For example, in this past week three new Citizen Action Networks have been seeded, in localities which we’ll reveal when the CANs are more developed.

In our first poll in the Action Forum, we agreed that any projects could be shared on the Daily Alternative public blog, but only after an incubation period. So if you want to experience what is going on in this space, step right in and take part (see the inset icon in this blog for more details). We’ll be having fortnightly community Zoom calls so you can meet each other and plot.

We’ll also be sharing the Forum’s top lines with the Weekly Alternative. Make no mistake: this is our attempt to take a lot of the good and great talking about collaboration that we do, and turn it into collective action that is capable of rising to the moment.

This is not another murmuration of many small interactors, producing intriguing shapes in the sky (itself a good metaphor for the current state of play). What’s evolving is more like a mycelium network of projects that integrate and replicate through a growing awareness of, communication between, and relationship with each other. It’s more – much more - than the sum total of its parts.

Oh, by the way: on International Women’s Day, this is the feminisation of politics. But that’s for a whole other column.

Alternative Editorial: Cause and Effect