The future is bright…the future is ethical?
That’s the proposal Sir Mark Moody-Stuart as reported by the BBC here. It’s certainly a proposal that’s been mooted elsewhere, too. How would NZ cope if we actually got serious about climate change and policy change like this was put forward? It would be great to hear your thoughts. Another EU related thought I heard recently was to ban incandescent lightbulbs. That’s been on the cards for a while of course.
The market will NOT sort out climate change, not on its own. In fact, it won’t sort out much at all. It’s a tool of political – an instrument for fashioning a society into the kind of place we want to belong to.
The only way our little nation will survive economically in the future is if it gets ahead of the curve on this one, and takes some real initiative. For instance, long haul tourism is under threat because of the ethics of flying (or rather the lack of ethics). While the baby boomers might manage to be oblivious to this/ignore this and ride it out, the day is coming when their replacement generations will not put up with it, and demand change. Ethical tourism (already found in parts of the country) will need to be the norm, not simply via some carbon credit scheme, but by ethical practices.
The only future of worth is one in which ethics takes the dominant place. The people demand it, and if they don’t know, they will. And the more they go on demanding it the more the markets these same people create will respond. The question is, can we be leaders in this field…? Imagine a time when buying locally is the norm again, where we reuse as a matter of course (like the way my old fence was turned into a neighbours raised beds)….etc.
The demands of the Old Left are important, but they will never fully describe the way things will be if for no other reason than the people making the future are too young to really know what the ‘Old Left’ (those heady days) were. New Labour have struggled to try and give expression to this future, and although they have made some significant and positive policy changes, many believe they have not developed a clear enough ethical position (for instance, their position over Japanese whaling seems to be a case in point). National, like other parties, will pursue a rhetoric to woo the voter (and realign themselves with an electorate to secure a long term role in government, should they win the election), and there is evidence of a party leadership eager to place them in a clearly defined position with which people can identify. Knowing where you stand and why you stand there is increasingly important for people.
Ethics isn’t politically partisan, it simply requires political imagination. It requires courage. The kind of courage that is willing to acknowledge the limits of a market based economic system of our own creating, and address those limits (at best) and to recognise that the market is shifting to ethical consumerism and the need to realign in order to survive (at least) through policy. As people who participate in many things, including markets, people are realising they want more than their consumption to define who they are. Perhaps this next General Election will be won or lost on the basis of who realises that, and who does not. Certainly, the future of our country will be secured on that basis.
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