Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

introduction S 7
• Did little to promote energy effi ciency and renewable energy;
and thereby
• Wasted trillions of dollars, which helped to weaken the
economy and thereby contributed to the collapse of fi nancial
markets in late 2008 and
• Created a legacy of debt and defi cits both ecological and
fi nancial.
Perhaps all of this can be explained by the generally modest level of
scientifi c literacy characteristic of elected offi cials. Policy failure at
this scale certainly refl ects the stranglehold of coal and oil money
on public policy. And the magnitude of failure has been multiplied
by the wasted treasure and time spent chasing the neoconservative
mirage of U.S. global domination. Whatever the cause, political
leaders of both parties squandered opportunities to act when the
crisis could have been headed off for a fraction of what we’ve paid
for the misadventure in Iraq. And decades of such governmental
and political failure have brought us uncomfortably close to the
brink of global collapse.
The blame cannot be placed solely on government or particular
offi cials, however, for in a democracy government refl ects, more
or less, the larger public will. Responsibility must be shared by all
of us, including notably the media. Long ago Walt Kelly’s cartoon
character, Pogo, captured this by saying “we have met the enemy
and he is us.” Climate destabilization, similarly, is the aggregate
result of our means of travel, our consumption, the infrastructure
by which we are fed and provisioned, and our manner of living,
all of which have been subsidized by the rapid drawdown of fossil
fuels. The enemy is us . . . but all of us together, properly led, can
make a big difference. And this is where governments enter the
picture. The multiple crises ahead require very different public
priorities and changes in policy, law, regulation, and the political
processes by which we conduct the public business.
There is a considerable movement to green corporations, and
that is all to the good. But only governments have the power to