Faced with terrible temporal, heat waves, tsunamis, snowfall, droughts, floods, why don’t we want to save the world? He wonders Federico Merke and responds by revealing aspects that clarify this event. If the climatic crisis is evident, why do countries do little and nothing to mitigate the damage that is occurring?
Federico Merke in “Why don’t we want to save the world?” (Twenty -first century), answer and open questions to this pressing topic. Merke He is a professor of International Relations and the Master of International Policy and Economics at the University of San Andrés. We dialogue with him.
Journalist: What do you think of novels, films and series that show a dystopia caused by climate change?
Federico Merke: There are science fiction films with great creativity and others that start from alleged scientists of the condition of the present. “The Ministry of the Future”, Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel, published 15 years ago, imagines that climate change became intolerable and you have to react to that. “What I imagined could happen, is happening,” said Robinson, and is not an activist of the energy transition. “Extrapolations”, a series created by Scott Z. Burns, shows in its chapters the effects of climate change over time, not only on ecosystems but also in our life, our work, our relationships. It is based on reports of the intergovernmental panel of climate change. The certain concern for what we are living, many advanced it 15 or 20 years ago.
Q.: Why is climate change the denial of politics as we know it?
FM.: Because politics, particularly democratic policy, has two major limitations. One, leaders in a democracy govern for their people and climate change is a global problem. Democracy is short, as a political system, because the concern of a president is the well -being of its population, not of the planet. Another limitation: politics is anchored in the short term, in electoral cycles, and those short cycles demand are visible successes, and in climatic action it is very difficult to establish a success in a short time. It’s about how we bet to live in the future, something very unnatural for the logic of politics.
Q.: Is there conflict between capitalist development and intervention in climate change?
FM: It is something that has trouble assuming many liberals. It is what is known as market failures, because capitalism generates a negative externalality, carbon emissions, but does not generate the incentive to face that problem. The solution of economists has been to put a tax on carbon issuance to internalize that damage caused by economic activity. That has been done, it has been necessary, but not enough. And in democratic terms it is a more cost to the voter. And it is not a solution that falls well to the population. Let us remember the experience of the yellow vests. Uploading a fuel tax generated reactions in transport and field workers.
Q.: What are the main problems of climate change?
FM: The increase in temperature. The goal of the Paris agreement is to avoid the increase of the one and a half or two degrees. Then there is the degradation of our natural capital. The loss of biodiversity, flora and fauna. Deforestation has to do with biodiversity, but also with releasing carbon emissions at the atmosphere. The acidification of the oceans, which is altering components and killing lives. What is most in the media is the increase in temperature that generates alterations in the weather, storms or droughts, excess or lack of water, floods or desertifications. And this is essentially economic because, by case, agricultural patterns. Wines and champanes are being made in the south of England, which 5 years ago did not occur. And in Italy and France the conditions to make them worsened. The impact of climate change is on the economy, the planet and people.
Q.: What are the positions about what is happening with the weather?
FM: Different. The broader consensus says that climate change arrives to stay. It is a phenomenon caused by human activity. The entire planet should collaborate in reducing emissions and adapting to a climate that has already changed. The majority of experts, and politicians, agree on this description. The very pessimistic believe that what can be done is very little, that it should have been done decades ago and making a transition is economically unfeasible. You have to adapt to circumstances and expect better conditions. They are the most apocalyptic. There are those who deny climate change as a scientifically verifiable phenomenon. There are those who, like our president, say that climate change does not occur due to human action, but obeys more or less natural cycles on the planet, and therefore we do not have much to do, what happens is not the fault of humanity. This does not prevent adaptation policies from having to do.
Q.: What should we adapt?
FM: If we accept that the weather changed, we must see how we adapt to a hotter planet. How we generate more shadow, better working spaces. How we reinforce the building structures, we protect the houses that are on the coast that will experience an increase in sea level. How we cover ourselves economically with droughts. The drought of years in Argentina took a little more than one point on GDP. It can be believed that it is not a product of human action, but it has concrete effects on people and the economy of the planet. Most leaders and experts consider that climate change is caused by human action, and that we still have time to reverse or avoid worse damage.
Q.: Why don’t we want to save the world?
FM: If we ask people if they want to save the world or if they want it to continue more or less as it is, you will say yes. The problem is that in addition to saving the world we have other tasks, grow, develop, depend less on China or Russia, and we are making other decisions that are postponing to save the planet, marginalizing a solution that should be global.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
