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Dec. 9th, 2007 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusHearing John Baird's decision not to support Kyoto if the US doesn't sign on the grounds that it would disadvantage Canadian companies disturbed me.
It shouldn't have shocked me, of course, but I think only then it really hit me, what I'd known intellectually -- they really believe that current economic fashion of laissez-faire trade is a higher priority than the survival of all life on earth, including the humans who populate those economies. Or they don't believe in the threat.
If it's the first, then they want to sacrifice all human life to the glory of a messianic economic ideal -- that is, they've decided that one economic model transcends everything else, including life. If the second, they don't believe in science, and are thus cut off completely from reality. I suspect it's the second, but I'm not really sure that's any less scary.
I suspect the next couple of decades are going to be battle between two visions of reality: one that suggests it's unrealistic to impose ecological regulations on the economy, and one that suggests that it's unrealistic to allow an economy to run roughshod over the natural world that, after all, we require to live.
The result of the struggle between nature and the current economic model is easy to see -- nature holds all the trump cards, and can't be bluffed. It'll win in any conflict.
Problem is, Baird doesn't seem to understand this. It's like he's stalling for time -- but time until what? There's no Terra ex Machina here -- no one's going to deliver a fresh new earth, to replace the one we broke.
When a sane government comes to power, the reversal of policy is going to have to be sudden and -- in this incredibly fragile economy we've designed that crumbles with collapse of a housing market in a single country, or a fall of currency on the other side of the world -- the sudden and much stricter policies will do more economic damage than they'd do now.
If we start making preparations now, we can preserve more of our way of life, keep more of the luxuries we enjoy, and alleviate some of the pain of the transition.
Baird's plan (or lack thereof) will lay the foundations of a future disaster, and likely in our lifetimes.
It shouldn't have shocked me, of course, but I think only then it really hit me, what I'd known intellectually -- they really believe that current economic fashion of laissez-faire trade is a higher priority than the survival of all life on earth, including the humans who populate those economies. Or they don't believe in the threat.
If it's the first, then they want to sacrifice all human life to the glory of a messianic economic ideal -- that is, they've decided that one economic model transcends everything else, including life. If the second, they don't believe in science, and are thus cut off completely from reality. I suspect it's the second, but I'm not really sure that's any less scary.
I suspect the next couple of decades are going to be battle between two visions of reality: one that suggests it's unrealistic to impose ecological regulations on the economy, and one that suggests that it's unrealistic to allow an economy to run roughshod over the natural world that, after all, we require to live.
The result of the struggle between nature and the current economic model is easy to see -- nature holds all the trump cards, and can't be bluffed. It'll win in any conflict.
Problem is, Baird doesn't seem to understand this. It's like he's stalling for time -- but time until what? There's no Terra ex Machina here -- no one's going to deliver a fresh new earth, to replace the one we broke.
When a sane government comes to power, the reversal of policy is going to have to be sudden and -- in this incredibly fragile economy we've designed that crumbles with collapse of a housing market in a single country, or a fall of currency on the other side of the world -- the sudden and much stricter policies will do more economic damage than they'd do now.
If we start making preparations now, we can preserve more of our way of life, keep more of the luxuries we enjoy, and alleviate some of the pain of the transition.
Baird's plan (or lack thereof) will lay the foundations of a future disaster, and likely in our lifetimes.