Jevons' paradox and a tax on aviation to prevent the next pandemic

How is it possible that, in an era of unprecedented medical progress, humanity is once again caught in a major pandemic? Several lines of evidence suggest that advances in infectious diseases control facilitate the development of major urban centers, global high-speed transportation, industrial animal farming and ecosystem destruction. In turn, all of these are well known to favor such diseases, thus reproducing the same kind of dynamic observed in resource consumption and known as Jevons’ paradox. Such economic developments compel health systems to develop continuously just to maintain what had already been achieved, which, furthermore, becomes more difficult under neoliberal policies. The process involves massive cost-shifting to society from firms in, e.g., the aviation or meat sector, which materializes intermittently in disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic. A proposal is presented to prevent comparable events in the future, with two parts. First, a global fund with base funding from an internationally-agreed tax on aviation, devoted to upgrading health systems and to programs to tackle sources of emerging infectious diseases, especially wild animal trade. Second and no less important, a global agreement to fundamentally transform agri-food systems. This plan should be accompanied by redoubled attention to various dimensions of global change.