Читать книгу The State of the World Atlas [ff] - Dan Smith - Страница 15

of crisis at all – but the timescale in which they should be understood is

much longer than a four- or five-year political cycle, which is the maximum

we are used to thinking in.

Of the five key issues that we must as a world community resolve in order

to prosper, our relationship to the natural environment is the most tangled,

the one in which knowledge is most essential to understanding, and the one

that has the highest stakes – yet the one on which we seem unable to act

on the scale that is needed. Though we cannot yet make out all the details

of the interaction between different components of this crisis – between

the different ways in which we are damaging the environment – we can

clearly see the critical moment bearing down on us. Yet generating a united

and viable response is currently beyond us. Calm reflection reveals that, on

the basis of what we currently know, there is time to act effectively as long

as we act now. But each day that passes increases the depth and scale of

change that is required.

PROBLEMS & SOLUTIONS

These five key challenges are in principle all amenable to solution. In one

sense, that is illustrated simply by there being successful approaches to

significant aspects of three of the five. Problems remain in the realms of war

and peace, rights and respect, and people’s health, but progress is visible.

There is less war, though violent conflict persists. There is more democracy

and more respect for human rights, though abuses persist and the

transition is often dangerous. Improvements in treatment for many of the

major ailments are available, though lifestyle diseases are on the increase.

Undernourishment is slowly reducing as a problem, but obesity – perhaps a

different kind of malnutrition – is now a global epidemic.

What holds us back from pressing through to greater improvements on these

three fronts and to sorting out at least some of the big issues of wealth,

poverty, and the natural environment is the condition of our politics and our

international political institutions. In Europe in the years since 2008 we have

seen signs of a breakdown in the fundamental relationship between citizens

and state – the implicit bargain that power is both real and accountable.

There is now such a deep resentment about taxpayers being forced to pay

the cost of the failings, incompetence and, in some cases, apparent crimes in

the major banks that it is building towards refusing consent to be governed.

The social and economic elite has shown a combination of incompetence

and the arrogance of impunity, and would-be political leaders continue to

cosy up to that elite so shamelessly that they are threatening the continued

viability of the contract of government.

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