Climate Change and Government — The Will of the People Is Being Badly Frustrated

Here’s an article based upon a recently conducted survey performed by Gallup on behalf of insurance giant Swiss Re that suggests that the world’s population cares a great deal about climate change — that, in fact, global warming is humankind’s number one worry today — even ranking above jobs and the economy.

Living in the U.S. and encountering climate change deniers in our Congress as I do, this came as a considerable surprise to me.  It also inspired a thought: the will of the people all over the world is being badly frustrated by government.

Obviously this is true in the U.S.  Virtually all Democrats and a large majority of Republicans want our leaders in Washington to foster energy efficiency, conservation, and renewable energy, but Congress simply thumbs its nose. Internationally, the situation is no better; the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which hosts periodic meetings in which representatives from each country are tasked with building a set of binding agreements re: the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, has a fairly dismal track record of success.

But eventually, this will change.  Take the case here in America as an example.  Our democracy has taken a considerable beating over the past few years, especially given the Supreme Court “Citizens United” decision, enabling corporations to spend as much as they want to influence the outcome of our elections.  We also suffer with some level of voter suppression, election fraud, gerrymandering, etc.  But at the end of the day, if we don’t like the way a certain representative behaves, we throw him/her out.  No matter how much money the oil companies funnel to, say, the election campaign of Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe (pictured above — 80% of whose campaign financing comes from Big Oil) eventually the good people of that fair state are going to tire of his attacking the clean energy industry, demand a certain level of intelligence and decency from their leadership, and expel him.

I hope.