Greta thunberg is back in the UK and is leading a protest in Bristol into the destruction of the environment and global warming. She has stated that young people have to be the adults in the room as the leaders of virtually all countries are not doing enough to save the globe.
Objectively it is hard to argue with her analysis.
I would like to think that the election of another leader like Trump would be impossible, but it actually happened once and there is still a significant chance that it happens again in November.
The science is irrefutable, and while there are a few global leaders such as trump who argue against the science, the majority accept it’s conclusion and simply argue about what to do about it.
The problem is essentially falls in a simple place. The vast majority of the world’s governments have admitted the existential threat to global warming causes. Unfortunately though this threat is going to occur sometime in the future. Current world leaders are failing to balance this threat and the desires of businesses today. Democracy, while a good form of government requires the people to re-elect a government every 4 or 5 years.
This gives governments around the world a problem. In order to make their population like like their proposals they must take effect within in the four or five years they have in power. Long-term planning for the well-being of people 30 or 40 years down the road does not therefore impact their thinking. Unfortunately though so this business as usual way of doing politics threatens the very existence of humans in the future. Dictatorships such as china appear at the moment to be able to increase their fight against global warming faster, as there are fewer people that need to be persuaded.
How we deal with this natural human behaviour is something that we need to work out. Individually humans put a huge amount of care and work into setting up their children for a life of success, yet increasingly parents and grandparents are setting up the world collectively to be unsustainable for human life in the same way that they have enjoyed it.
