More Stern Thinking
| 20:16 UK time, Tuesday, 31 October 2006
Simon Zadek's on the threat from global warming (in that excellent web magazine openDemocracy.net) will probably be condemned as warmed over Marxism. But I was engaged by his theory that political leaders in rich countries are too well protected from the effects of climate change to pass the laws that would make a difference.
He says: "no rich-nation leader will pay the human and financial costs of the Iraq war, or compensate for the poverty resulting from the failure of the Doha trade round."
Simon uses the example of the religious elite in Easter Island who (according to ) deforested the landscape making log rollers to roll the stones to build bigger and bigger totems. They didn't suffer the environmental effect until too late - because they were the elite and lived better than anyone else.
Neat theory, but a bit of a stretch from the available archaeological evidence which is of growing population and shrinking food resources - porpoises, apparently.
Who were the members of the elite, and how do we know they couldn't work out what was going wrong?
Maybe the two thousand Easter Island survivors found by the first European to arrive there in 1722 were the ones left behind. A bit like the hairdressers and phone sanitizers sent off by the cleverer Golgafrinchan's to 'discover new worlds' in the Ark Fleet Ship B in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
"Just look after the statues, we'll be back shortly... and don't eat the last porpoise all at once..."
Are there any photographs? Just a guess, then.
And I do worry just a bit when people blame "them" for society's problems.
Today, when people can make choices to cause less pollution they probably don't.
Do middle class voters in Britain who are most politically active and most likely to disapprove of polluting industries and uncontrolled economic growth all walk their children to school - or are they more likely to drive their children to school rather than walk? Take a guess.
Messing up the planet is a bad thing, but blaming "them" may not be the answer.
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