Tag: government

COP21 is not going to work! Jasser Auda News of the COP21 deal and jubilant celebrations that politicians showed the world gave a false sense of achievement to millions of people around the world. I believe that it is an ethical responsibility to express the truth, regardless of how strange it might sound in the middle of the celebrations and propaganda. And the truth is: there will be no reverse of the disastrous path that we took the earth towards unless, in my opinion, we change the way we do these things: politics, business and media. National and international politics in the current political system of nation states, and the way United Nations is structured and functioning, do not allow any real progress on the climate front. Governments are either dictatorships or elected democratically. Dictatorships do not care about the human nor the environment, to cut a long story short. Democratically elected governments, on the other hand, are there to represent at best the interests of their nation states and at worst the interests of pressure groups within these states. However, it is a fact that government policies and decisions that would preserve the environment for humanity go against both interests, at least on the short run. National interests are firmly defined in terms of the economics of "growth", which by definition requires a negative impact on the environment....