Last summer, when we were writing A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal, a global pandemic was far from our minds. But we knew something bad was coming. Back then, we put it this way:

At the time of writing (Summer 2019), the Trumpian nightmare feels ghoulishly routine. But change comes in volcanic bursts, and the magma beneath us is boiling. A global economic slump looms; climate disasters are unfolding faster than ever. Ecological and economic crises are sure to coincide and mutually reinforce. At the time of writing, North Americans are struggling to make their car loan payments, and student debt is obliterating the bank accounts of millions of millennials. There are billions of dollars in real estate value in housing markets that are literally about to go underwater — forever — in places like Miami Beach. Oil majors, some of the world’s biggest companies, are valued based on their reserves — which contain roughly five times as much carbon as we can burn without destroying civilization. The Bank of England is warning all who will listen about these “stranded assets.” In 2008, we saw what a few million bad mortgages could do to a hyperfinancialized, overleveraged, and interconnected global economy. Worse is coming.

Well, worse is here.