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