The climate emergency: we’re all responsible, but nobody’s to blame…
As the reality of the climate emergency becomes ever-clearer, with more intense and longer heat waves, droughts, fires and feedback cycles that make things worse, the more obvious it is that the real problem lies in governance, or the lack thereof.
Let me explain: for centuries now, there’s been governance of the planet; each country has pursued its own energy and resource exploitation needs, which in practically all cases has been about short-term maximization. As a strategy, it is the most basic there is: take the resources that nature offers you, and burn them.
Does your country have oil? Extract as much as you can, burn what you need to industrialize and raise your standard of living, and sell the surplus. Most countries with little else to sell but oil, have been plagued for decades by dictatorship and corruption, again reflecting a total absence of any kind of long-term strategy. In the few where some kind of order has prevailed, the exploitation of natural resources has established a new normal from which to build wealth.
For many decades, developed countries took advantage of their own natural resources and those they could obtain by whatever means to build their wealth. This included the uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels, the cheapest-and also, obviously, the most…
