How many of them truly are?

I used to work for an airline. I loved flying. I loved travelling. I loved the buzz of arriving in a totally different place. I loved the different smells, climates, shops and streets and cars and shoes and music and food and shirts and television channels and noises and currencies. 

But since the lockdown, I have come to love even more the crisp skies that are no longer crisscrossed by mostly useless contrails. 
I have loved the motorways devoid of traffic and the bicycle journeys with minimal inhalation of exhausted fossil fuels. 

In the pre pandemic days, there was a real awareness of the suicidal impact of our consumerist habits on the environment. A lot of good will but little readiness to drastically change our habits. A bit less plastic packaging here, a bit more recycling there, a little green vote in the ballot there. Bladdy-bladdy-blah. 

Do we want to return to stag weekends in foreign countries? Work conventions on other continents? The right to fly as often as we want enshrined in the ECHR? The access to turbo diesel 4x4s protected by the Geneva Convention? 

People are fretting to get back to business. Back in their SUVs. Back to crowded airports. Back to flying to Bratislava because the beers are cheap and the flights are cheap and a stag night in Dublin is boring (and costs more than the flight and accommodation and beers in Bratislava). Back to buying a new TV made in China every 5 years because the screen on the current one is no longer flat enough, or 4k-ish enough, or 8k-ish enough, or smart enough, or there is a piece of software in it that makes it shut down at unexpected time, to remind the owner that it is time to dump it and get a shiny new one. 

In the last few weeks, I have been reminded that our basic needs are surprisingly few: a roof over one's head, massive quantities of toilet paper, pasta, rice, flour, WiFi and tomato sauce. Actually WiFi should be the first item on the list. 

I sort of feel that now would be a good time to introduce radical changes about how we consume and feel entitled to consume and waste and feel entitled to waste. 
I also know that this rare opportunity will be totally missed. Wasted even. We must be entitled to waste. Including the waste of opportunities.