(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers.)

In the last few weeks we have seen a shift in our society. The talk is not about growth and development but about helping our fellow citizens survive and thank those who make it possible. We are looking, hopefully, to sustain life.

The air is cleaner, we have become more interested in overtly helping others, in appreciating the people who staff supermarkets and shops, pick up our trash and pump gas. We have an empathy for laid-off workers and there is a heightened awareness of our own fragile mortality.

Our economic system is based on the capitalist culture that demands ongoing growth, not sustainability. This may work for a capitalist organization but now we see the flaws in for-profit healthcare, in the precarious vulnerability of the thousands who live paycheck to paycheck, of the exposure the food and healthcare essential supply chain has to failure from factory or farm to our shops. Just-in-time deliveries cannot cope with sudden surges, we see this in the empty shelve. The for-profit healthcare system has to be propped up by taxpayer dollars to enable a response to the pandemic and the survive on the other side. We have become the health insurer of last resort.

Countries such as Iceland, New Zealand, Finland and others replaced economic growth and development as yardstick for their societies and replaced it with sustainability and the goal of citizen well-being. We have the ‘pursuit of happiness’ phrase in our bill of rights, but other nations have adopted this calling while we pay it lip service. In the dogged pursuit of economic growth have we have missed the core element of what the founders really intended?

In our city the administration has changed its focus largely from development to sustainability. Their focus has been on managing to provide the citizens with essentials – food, PPE, assistance for the elderly and disabled, accommodation, testing, etc. All items connected to sustainability. Human issues. Suddenly, the air is cleaner, traffic has eased, we think of cleanliness, of caring and thanking – not of development. Many are in need of essentials so food is being provided by the food banks to accommodate those who cannot afford to buy food. Evictions are suspended because of late rents due to unemployment. We are thinking of our neighbors and helping each other more.

This is the time for a reset in our thinking. Do we really need to maintain a high rate of development or should we, as a city, be focused on sustainability? Do we need more single family homes converted to luxury condos or should the need for affordable housing be more important? Is there a message in this pandemic from mother nature telling us that we have been wrong focused on what is important and instead have been following the Wall St dogma of growth, growth and profit?

Now is the time to rethink priorities. The pandemic has given us the perfect example and the time is right. It is time for us to work for sustainability and well-being not growth because one has positive benefits to us all and the other just benefits a few at the cost of the many and is ultimately unsustainable.

Alan Bingham
Somerville