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

governance S 39
accountability. Once again, we painfully learn that assigning foxes
to guard the henhouse is good neither for the hens nor eventually
for starving foxes.
This is neither an argument against markets in their proper
place nor one against corporations properly chartered and regulated
for the public good. It is decidedly not an argument
against private enterprise, although we have every reason to
dislike unaccountable corporate power, as well as the power of
business to manipulate appearances so as to appear considerably
better than they are. My position is not “socialist,” whatever that
word is presumed to mean, but it is decidedly in favor of placing
limits on corporate power and even individualism where its
excesses cast long shadows on the prospects of our grandchildren
and theirs. It is not a hymn to a mythical American past but
a call to draw strength and perspective from our history, which
at its best has been always pragmatic and experimental. We must
repair and enhance our civic culture and our collective capacity
to solve problems associated with climate change in the brief
time before they become unmanageable. To that end we will
need courageous leadership and a media suffi ciently committed
to the larger public good to promote a national conversation on
the rules and procedures by which we make crucial choices in
the long emergency ahead, starting with those set down in our
founding as a nation. In this conversation, business and commerce
clearly have an important role. But they can no longer
be given the power, whether by domination of the media or
by backroom lobbying, to confl ate corporate profi t with the
public interest.
GOVERNANCE AND PUBLIC ORDER
IN THE LONG EMERGENCY
No one can know the founders’ “original intentions” on any
number of issues, or what they might have thought about those