Not the trumped up kind such as make believe statistics or unsupported claims. How about this to throw a bit of gasoline on the fire. And yes this is all about personal opinion.
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During World War II, a large share of humanity stared into the abyss.
In the unforgiving conditions, traumatised by their collective experience, almost everyone wanted to build a better, safer and fairer world.
They accepted this meant sharing some of their wealth and freedoms with others for the common good.
Public hospitals and schools were built, living standards were deliberately raised and ancient class divisions were broken down.
Later, as the developed world came to feel more comfortable and less vulnerable, many started to begrudge the spending of their money on such intangible, long-term benefits; the post-war contract between citizens and their states started to break down.
By the 1980s, politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had even started to suggest that there was "no such thing as society". Investors could single-handedly make the world a better place and any constraint on trade, such as a nasty old law, was quickly labelled as a burdensome hindrance.
The rhetoric proved to be hugely successful electorally in many countries; and while Reagan and Thatcher once stood at the fringes of political thought, their view of personal and consumer choice as an article of faith has become mainstream.
Even financial disasters such as Enron, the looming pensions "time-bomb", and Hurricane Katrina do not seem to have fundamentally shaken the widespread belief that the market will one day, somehow, mystically solve our problems.
But why should consumer choice be sacrosanct?
Are consumers best placed to make informed choices? Are there not situations where a bit of straightforward regulation might be more effective?
It was as far back as 1951 that Sir Richard Doll first showed the link between smoking and lung cancer; yet consumers still choose to buy cigarettes.
Clearly, having a good evidence base is not enough on its own to produce sensible decisions.
In the case of climate change, our scientific understanding is increasingly robust, and it is becoming inevitable that we will have to reduce our carbon emissions drastically.
But we simply do not like the implications; we have become emotionally attached to our fossil fuel lifestyles and status symbols.
Governments and businesses, of course, need to remain popular. For businesses this means selling as cheaply as possible; for governments, giving us jam today as well as promising it tomorrow.
So who will take responsibility for unleashing the potential solutions to global climate change?
In the view of many, leadership from our elected representatives is essential.
This is especially true when it comes to changing the rules under which individuals and businesses compete, and making the hard choices for the long-term good of society.
By contrast, maintaining a business-as-usual approach merely encourages consumers to continue buying cheap, inefficient, technologies.
Another insidious side effect of governments not giving leadership is that businesses fear being undercut and losing market share, should they ever incur discretionary yet responsible costs which are being avoided by their competitors.
Undoubtedly, breaking this paralysis will require immense moral courage. For courage, leaders of today need only to look back in time a little and see what their predecessors did.
For example, the hard-won ban against slavery deliberately went against what was considered economically justified.
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Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6067960.stm Anyone want to jump in and take a swing at it? This is where science and politics meet Edina Monsoon (pictured at the link and looking oh so lovely as always).
