Search This Blog

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Swindon Think Slam, Second talk - why do we let politicans lie?



Why do we let politicians lie to us? 

We could try and persuade ourselves that we are powerless to stop them or we can blame the press for not holding them properly to account or pretend to ourselves that that they are of such low life that we should expect nothing better.  

But, what would happen if we got our wish and the politicians suddenly spoke the truth, what would they say to us?   

They would say something like this; 

Atmospheric CO2 is at 400ppm and increasing so fast that catastrophic global heating is unavoidable. As a result sea level rises will be so high that we must immediately start evacuating our coastal cities and decommissioning our nuclear reactors.

There will be no energy to enable us to do this, because we will either run out of energy or the climate change agreements we reach in December this year will be so draconian that we won't be allowed to burn what we have. All the critical life support systems in our energy intensive economy will cease to be reliable, from the refrigerators in your homes to the logistic systems that deliverer food and emergency aid.  

In the chaos that we face, we will be unable to trust any other nation to abide by international law and we expect increased proliferation of nuclear weapons. 

There will be no money to fund responses to any of this because our debt based financial system relies on future prospects of growth for its liquidity. As there are no prospects for the future, there will be no money.  

With a global population heading towards 10 billion, all these problems will be magnified by mass migration, panic and endless war.   

That is what our politicians would tell us if they were to tell the truth, and then they would ask us to vote for the cold blooded rational policies to address these crises so they had the mandates they need but which we fear giving to anyone.  

And what would you do if you heard the politicians telling everyone the truth and you realised the masses now know what you fear. You will do what everyone else will do, you will race to your nearest Tesco to rip the food of the shelves and beat to a pulp anyone that tries to stop you, meanwhile everyone will be doing the same. 

It will be a free for all, and it is to stop this that we accept the lies of our politicians. We all know that none of them can balance the budgets, fund the NHS, tackle climate change or solve wealth inequality, but we accept these failures as the price for stability and we hope against all reason that the lying can continue indefinitely. 

So we go to the ballot box and partake in the charade, because that's all we can do.  

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Vortex-Violence-losing-climate-ebook/dp/B00PUNSI06

No comments: