Why are so few of our leaders willing to make the "strong ethical case for vigorous and concerted action to mitigate climate change"? 107
It’s literally all about money. What is currently profitable and what is currently not profitable. Millions of dollars have been channeled into the systems we currently have in place and any company that does significant change would have to pay hand over fist to accommodate these significant changes. Those who do not will also lose millions of dollars but also be left in the dust. So rather than facilitating these changes, they choose to instead lobby politicians to back their horse rather than the peoples’. Once technology gets better, and we find cheaper and more efficient methods to replace the already cost efficient ones we have now, then more and more companies will hopefully be able to justify the cost of change in favor of long term savings.
Another reason is that the current non renewable economy employs a decent amount of employees. Once we no longer need coal, oil and the like, the jobs that all have to do with extraction, transportation, refining, and more, will go the way of the milk man. In order to prevent this gap in employment, we would need to invest in educating and retraining thousands of people in other fields that they may have no experience in which would require more accessible education through universities and trade schools. Hopefully the growth in renewable methods can fill this gap in jobs naturally. However, these will unfortunately require completely different skill set.
Hey Shannon,
ReplyDeletemoney is definitely a big part of this whole thing. The problem with your argument is also, that companies do not feel supported by the government if they are making changes. Therefore, they do not give the government their support and that is why the leaders are not willing to help. We all know there are certain leaders, that put the economy over the well-being of the planet and its people, which definitely has to do with profit.
That is the point that I also tried to get across in my essay, is that it is just a big back-and-forth, in which no one wants to make the next step because it needs the support from the other side. As long as we cannot break the cycle, we will have no progress and only a few leaders will have the courage and the means to mitigate climate change.
Anything requiring "support from the other side" is doomed, in the current political reality in the U.S. We need leaders who will consult with their counterparts in places like Germany where the cycle of mutual hostility has been broken. And maybe we need more sweeping systemic change too.
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