Читать книгу The State of the World Atlas [ff] - Dan Smith - Страница 16

It is, in the end, unlikely that this will erupt into any kind of revolution

and, if it does, the odds are that it will be profoundly unpleasant for

ordinary people. But it is the kind of deep-seated problem that may make

it next to impossible to generate new policies and approaches to prevent

environmental degradation and successfully address the other major issues.

Our enemies in trying to generate new and better approaches are inequality,

unfairness and social exclusion, short termism, and blinkered allegiance to

norms and policies that used to be functional. Anything and everything

that limits the amount of knowledge that can be brought to bear on a

problem, and the number of knowledge-holders that can get engaged, is an

obstacle. Part of this problem resides in the limitations of the institutions we

have developed to regulate our affairs. We need new ones. There is energy

available that has not yet been harnessed and connected to engines of

change. The old power formats are creaking but the new ones have not yet

emerged.

KNOWING THE WORLD

Getting things more or less right on these five issues will be done by

international agreement or not at all, for no single government can handle –

or should even dream of handling – the whole set of issues alone, and much

of it will in turn be based on shared knowledge and understanding.

Of course, knowledge is not the same as wisdom. You can know all the

facts and still not be able to act wisely. But without knowledge, it is harder

to be wise – even if what wisdom tells us is that knowledge is very often

provisional and that we cannot wait to have certainty about every fact

before we act.

DAN SMITH

LONDON, JULY 2012

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