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Richard Joy

Why politicians can’t solve climate change

By Richard Joy | Sat 28th January 2017 - 9:00 am

Now, I don’t want to launch into a political rant but it often appears that politicians are only concerned with winning the popular support of the electorate. They avoid confronting the difficult issues and students of BBC sitcoms know that the words most likely to strike fear into the heart of Jim Hacker MP, were: ” … a very brave decision minister.”

In some ways, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It broadly supports continuity and stability, avoiding the potential calamity of politicians who pursue their own passing whims with little regard to the hopes and aspirations of the voting public. However, effective democracy does presume that people understand the implications of the policies that their governments pursue. A successful society needs an electorate that is informed, critical and motivated to participate in the political process.

The political process works less well when a country is led by popularist politicians offering sound-bite policies to an electorate that is poorly informed. And no, this is not a rant about Brexit or political developments in America. This is a warning that all democracies have this flaw and we ignore it at our peril.

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