Not many years ago, the world waited with bated breath whenever interest rates seemed likely to be tweaked one way or another. Even when Alan Greenspan announced that no change would be made, the world scrutinised the slightest twitch of his eyebrows to peer into the future.
Everybody who was anybody with the slightest pretension to awareness of international markets or their effect on local economies was keenly aware of the intricacy of the system, its delicate balance and of the need to avoid shocking it. Today every nobody is keenly aware of what a walloping great shock it has received and what little effect the most colossal interventions have had in bringing it back to normal operation.
Compared to nature, the global economy is a simple affair. Ecosystem interlocks with ecosystem around the globe, life growing thanks to its exploitation of the inanimate in the sea, the atmosphere, the earth or the sun. Nonetheless hundreds of species continue to be driven to extinction every year before science has had a chance to discover them let alone explore their effect on our reality.
Climate science deals with just a part of this infinitely complex web of relationships and despite the work of decades collated by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change doubters and deniers persist in contradicting the conclusions reached.
If climate science provides us with probabilities instead of certainties, biotechnology is a Pandora’s Box of awesome proportions. It has taken humanity two centuries of emissions to bring the climate to a crisis; it could take just a handful of us much less to do the same by dabbling irresponsibly with the building blocks of life itself. As science and technology take us to another level of potential, the risks increase in tandem.
In the last several months the climate change and flu pandemic issues have served to make us aware of the global nature of these challenges, of our vulnerability even as we struggle to deal with them. Our tools, whether world leaders and Copenhagen or the WHO and Health Authorities around the world seem less than adequate to the challenges before us. Add global terror to the mix and the causes for our anxieties advance by geometric progression.
With the exception of nightmarish pockets of tyranny such as North Korea the world relies on private enterprise to operate the economy, to do things; to affect consumer patterns and human behaviour. Vast power has accumulated in hands of transnational corporations with little or no accountability to their shareholders let alone to their clients and almost none to the global commons.
Unless we plan to emigrate to Mars some time soon or to be reduced to a blubbering mass of desperation, our response to challenges like these has to be to attempt to do whatever we can, however infinitesimal it may seem in its impact. I expect that our first step should be not to ignore the issues.
Millionaires or paupers as we might be, it is all too good an excuse to tell ourselves that we are too busy and too ignorant of the issues to give them any of our time. Nobody else will do it for us and there are simple common sense rules to guide us if we seek them out.
Do we or do we not want to reduce our carbon footprint in view of the threat of climate change? We can not refuse to decide and claim to be civilized. This is the issue of our time. Now is the time to form an opinion and we have every means at our disposal to do so. We do not have to wait on anyone to form our opinion for us. The simple common sense rule is to approach the subject without pre-conceived ideas.
The same applies to biotechnology and every other innovation that can have an impact on our lives or on life as we know it. But this is not a single issue. How do we stand on cloning, on in vitro fertilization, on human genetic modification, on genetic modification generally? Pandora’s box is open and the regulation of what is allowed to come out of it depends on politicians who should depend on people when framing regulations and regulatory structures. If we do not have the time and the resources to explore every separate issue we should at least feel the need to lend our support in the framing of general rules. If the consequences of a particular discovery are unknown or unknowable should the precautionary principle be applied or should we look only at the immediate practical and financial advantages offered? Should GMOs be allowed to enter nature or be restricted, controlled and isolated? Should anyone with a few thousands dollars worth of equipment be allowed to dabble with the genetic makeup of viruses, wildlife, domestic animals or plants?
If we have not yet formed our opinions on these issues, it may be time to realise that they are way more important than the cost of electricity, whether bus owners should be granted subsidies or whether Inter is a better team than Juventus. Getting to grips with these issues, adding our infinitesimal weight on one side or the other of the debate is a matter of civilization, a matter of being human.
Ironically the people most keenly aware of the need for caution in economic matters have tended to be the same people who throw caution to the wind on all things ecological. Innovation for innovation’s sake has been their mantra and precaution an extravagance slowing economic growth. The climate change deniers among them have been more than a few until just recently when it began to dawn on them that the response to it will drive the next economic revolution.
When we look back on the last several months in years to come, we may come to identify them as a major turning point, the beginning of the beginning of a culture change in which the inextricable bonds between the economy and the ecology were widely realised and the need for prudence and caution in both facets of our reality universally acknowledged.
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