Individual countries have become so powerful that they can singlehandedly destroy the entire ecosphere through emissions (or nukes). There is nothing wrong with that, technology is awesome and fossil fuels makes human lives better…in moderation.
Humans, as a whole, have KNOWINGLY been destroying their planet’s ecosphere for 3 decades. Sovereignty, selfishness, greed, mistrust, cheating, short 2-digit human lifespans and political aversion to even slight economic pain have all prevented all countries on earth to globally reduce emissions in a fair and effective way. We cannot moderate in our present global political structures. The U.N is too weak, treaties are toothless and unenforced.
We need a world emperor or world president who can FORCE any countries to curb emissions in whichever way s/he sees fit. It’s a really drastic, unprecedented step and most countries would balk at the loss of sovereignty so it’s difficult to achieve, but we need one.
Even if global warming doesn’t prove catastrophic, the continually increasing destructive power countries have (we already have nukes and scarier bio weapons by the day) will lead into other situations where global, empowered leadership is needed.
At this point, I’d settle for a benevolent world dictator if the alternative is rising oceans and hurricanes and tsunamis that wipe out NYC, Washington D.C, Miami, L.A, San Francisco and Seattle.
At least the dictator can eventually be replaced with a democratically elected leader within a few decades. The destruction we’re causing will likely take thousands of years to reverse.
No, because while you assume that organizations like the UN are toothless, history shows that we can reach agreements that virtually all the world agrees; after all for thousands of years many nations thought that slavery was ok, not anymore, and treaties do make a difference.
One of the best generalists out there, James Burke, made a BBC docudrama called “After the Warming” explaining that indeed, not much is done until disasters pop up, but then virtually all do agree on what is needed to do, no world dictator is needed.
Actually Burke was also very prophetic about nuclear disasters early in the 21st century and the sight of several nations abandoning the technology. (IMHO they are wrong for dropping nuclear energy, but advances elsewhere tells me that it is not going to stop change)
So with that I do want to say that there is no need for a dictator, but as I concluded a long time ago, it will be thanks to the misbehavior of international corporations and fossil fuel ones that are acting like one that we will get a world government. To counter the modern robber barons we will get what it will look as a world government, but only regarding a few items that affect the global commons.
One should really check the BBC program of James Burke over here:
In answer to the OP: Yes I agree. At least with the part of “president”, not so much with the “dictator” idea.
In fact I think it is obvious and inevitable. Tribes join together with other tribes to create super-tribes, that is what evolution is doing. Cells join with cells to create bigger organisms, these organisms join with others etc etc.
Intellectually we’re also moving from an ethnocentric (pre rational) world view to a wold centric (rational) one. Instead of just “me and my tribe” some people now view all humans as part of their tribe. Instead of “us and them” it’s “all of us”. That is the future, that is were evolution leads us, and if we don’t fuck up too much on the way (nuclear war) then that is where we should arrive.
I’d be perfectly happy voting for Obama as Earth President by the way.
I think this analogy, as an inevitability, is too simplistic. Tribes cooperate together when it is mutually beneficial, but the whole point of having a tribe is to be separate in some way, for other advantages, and it often goes the other way, as with Czechoslovakia, East Timor, South Sudan, etc.
To extend this analogy, you’re not feeling well and go to several doctors – about 99% of the doctors you see tell you it’s a serious illness which will require costly and difficult treatment, but one doctor and a bunch of random internet people (including several who tell you that God would never have made you sick) tell you that you’re fine and it will go away on its own.
So yeah, there’s a chance it will go away on its own.
Theoretically, following this type of reasoning, you would think the communist Soviet Union would have had a vastly better environmental record than Western Europe (Western Europe being filled with greedy industrialists).
The various countries of the world were able to figure out and work together a solution to ozone depletion (a work still in progress, but at least partially successful). People just have to be convinced that it’s real and in their best interest. Eventually that’s going to happen with respect to global warming, although I hope that’s sooner rather than later.
And yet ‘we’ are. The US has been dropping it’s CO2 for years now. Slowly, but it’s dropping. Same with Europe. Japan also I believe (though there it might be due to economic recession after economic recession). Without your draconian hammer to the head, companies and governments are already developing alternatives, implementing alternatives (though not nuclear) and generally moving us along towards lowering CO2 emissions. You can perhaps argue we aren’t lowering them fast enough, but you can’t really say we can’t do it at all without a world wide dictator. Hell, even WITH that I don’t see how any non-fictional non-fantasy dictator could basically by fiat lower global CO2 in much more meaningful ways than it’s being done already. What would you do? Order your Chinese and Indian subjects not to use fossil fuels anymore? Order the US, Europe, Japan, etc to build a shit ton of nuclear plants after literally decades of scaring people with how dangerous they are? Order Americans etc etc not to use cars anymore? Your world wide empires economy would completely melt down and you’d be looking at rebellions everywhere. And, ironically, you’d get a worse long term solution, since you’d be dictating a (probably very bad) solution to the world to implement, instead of allowing the market in conjunction with various governments to work through what’s the best thing. Oh, I could get behind making countries built a ton of nuclear power plants, but I know that, as much as it would help, you’d get so much resistance by trying to do it by fiat that it would be detrimental in the end, instead of helpful. The best way to get, say, nuclear power plants is to allow it to happen organically, so to speak (nuclear…an alternative vegetable! :p)…you need to shift public opinion on it at the grass roots and build a consensus for building the things in large quantities WITH realistic price tags and risks that the public can understand as well as weigh against the risks of GHG and global warming. You need to do the same thing with Global Warming itself, which is what’s happening right now and will continue to happen for the next decade or so. People need to be on board with what the real risks are, and what the real costs are going to be, as well as what the realistic alternatives are to the current fossil fuel paradigm. You will fail if you try to do all that by fiat, IMHO.
If we had just learned about this 5 years ago, then I would also agree with your approach. The issue is that we’ve had 3 decades for the U.N to do something and everybody to agree but it didn’t work with global warming and we already ran out of time to keep the planet as it was. Now we’re just talking about mitigating the disaster.
We failed miserably. I’ve been tracking human efforts regarding Gwobal Wawming since the early 90s and it has been a series of crushing disappointments. I’m not going to put a positive spin on it. We done messed up, and we done messed up bad.
Thank you for seeing what I see. I could kiss you!
destroying our biosphere is way worse than any dictatorship. It’s a couple of orders of magnitude worse genocide, as a matter of fact. We really, REALLY need that biosphere.
No. not at all. the point is that each country is selfish, the USSR would have been selfish like China today. (bear in mind i’m not using the term selfish in a derogatory way, but a scientific way, as in “selfish gene”).
