All Tomorrow's Parties
An article today in the Independent helps alleviate a taboo of environmentalism--namely its inability to place a firm date on when the effects of our industry will affect the environment at large. Specifically the report (to be released tomorrow) states that the effects of global warming will become irreversible in 10 years. I find this interesting because--if the report is accurate--it forces to the forefront an issue of great importance to me.
Environmental issues have traditionally been ignored because the business community makes the claim that regulations will drive up their costs, which are then handed down to the consumer. Framed this way, people have been enthusiastically willing to bend over backwards to accomodate the interests (read: profits) of corporations. If we assume for a moment that the 10-year window is real, how would the business community react? Would their economic arguments still carry weight? The larger issue I alluded to is the role of business interests in democratic society. They have all the say when it comes to economic interests. They are not accountable to an electorate. In fact, they even give themselves titles like "captains of industry" while simultaneously making paeans to the invisble gods that drive the market. My question is simple: who is in control? The answer is very few people, but no one discusses this openly because, again, it contradicts the ideals of democracy. Only a global crisis--one that affects the developed and developing countries alike, though not necessarily equal--such as global warming will bring out this contradiction. If I welcome the haste of this environmental prognosis it is not out of a desire to experience entropy but rather to force the people of the world to confront business "leaders" and hold them accountable to public, rather than private interest.
N.B. I realize I've largely glossed over this enormous subject and intend to do better justice to it in the future. I would like to make clear that I am not in any way "anti-business" or believe in the efficacy of command-style economies. I instead offer a critique of a system that is becoming enshrined as the only option, indeed as the "natural" system. When the same interests propagating this system also control the means of dissemination ("the media") this further complicates it's relationship to democracy.