Budget

- Why does the headway towards sustainability remain limited?


The crucial element for this lack of willingness lies in the government's main restraint - the budget. As it has been said before, achieving sustainability is no cheap task, and if immediate serious measures were to be taken by the government in the public sector for example, this would be a expensive cost. Government's constant battle is with itself, in attempting to appropriately divide and distribute the budget. If proportionate sustainability efforts were to be part of this equation, the battle would lose out on too many present fronts. Therefore informing the population to put even more pressure on this will in no way alleviate the already straining government.

Another element are the external forces which influence decision-making. A large stake of these can justifiably be attributed to the weight of corporate lobbying. Informed, aware and powerful, it seeks to reap profits in a panoply of sectors. This manifests itself through an array of pressures on the government, in turn influencing a certain allotment of budget priorities.

The raging debate is concerning the priorities. And it is here that matters become much more complex. Ideologies, interests, beliefs and opinions all clash and form a bustle; yet at the end of the day one voice must rise above and lead the way for some length. How and why that voice ascends all the others is a curious question. One would believe that the leading voice is the one deemed (objectively, scientifically and morally) to be the best of all propositions, chosen through a informed democratic process. Yet not only is this rarely the case, we must also admit to the complete absence of such a process in many decision making accounts. It is in these numerous and varied circumstances that contradictory priorities are set.

Despite its amplitude, the climate change debate is but a mirror of societies' structural flaws. Attempting to analyze the difficulties in harnessing climate change leads to recognize key elements which pollute and weaken our global system. Here, having an informed, critically thinking and willing population presents a worst-case scenario for governments - because the succeeding costs of this are too high. Without aggression I think it is fair to say that this scenario in itself, is one feared by many.

This arbitrary lack of transparency is poisoning democracy.