2023-08-03 03:30:00
Neither the opposition nor the ruling party have any proposal for the environmental challenges that we face in the future. All the political forces in the campaign are achieving something incredibly difficult. Deny the obvious, hide the inconceivable, what has a daily presence in our lives: high temperatures, droughts, permanent fires and almost impossible to control, clouds of ash and smoke, shrinking glaciers, seas advancing on coasts and many more extreme weather events. This short winter promises us a long hellish summer.
The environmental disaster is going from global warming to a state of global boiling. “The era of boiling” was the phrase used by the Secretary General of the United Nations when noting that the northern hemisphere had the hottest month of July in the history of humanity. The world’s political responses range from denial (Trump, Bolsonaro) to cosmetic solutions which will be a form of distraction. In contrast, what is surprising is that In the Argentine electoral campaign there is a silence that can only augur the worst: late reaction and improvisation.
Environmental challenges raise the question of survival and the political system seems to abandon a distracted society to its fate. Virtually no political force has a plan to think regarding the future in the face of events that are undeniable and hit harder every day. When the air is unbreathable and the heat unbearable, it will be too late.
The environmental crisis is a public health crisis. In the cities there will be bubbles of humidity that together with the heat cardiorespiratory problems, decompensation, dehydration increase -among others- that attack vulnerable groups (elderly, women, children). Not to mention mental health issues in a generation with multiple anxieties.
Self-generated fires cause disasters that are difficult to face with committed but precarious and voluntary forces like those of the provinces and the federal system. A professional force of firefighters once morest the fires that will multiply seems reasonable. Fires -and other environmental problems- are no longer extraordinary, they will become increasingly common and stronger.
Last summer was the coolest we will have in the next 50 years. Last summer will always be cooler than the one to come. That is the rule of the exceptional world we live in.
Answers can be projected to exceptional situations that await us in the coming years and the uncoordinated and belated reaction can still be avoided. You can still act without despair on issues that no one -but no one- can avoid. The effects of the ecological crisis will hit across the board, especially the weakest and most humble, the elderly, children and women. However, the impact will touch us all.
The majority of professional politicians, civil servants, businessmen, trade unionists and other actors of public and private power seem to abandon future generationsThis includes, of course, their own children, grandchildren and relatives, to a future that is increasingly dystopian and unlivable.
The political and business system will deny it until social forces force them to give answers. Meanwhile, they will surely offer us air conditioners in installments to make everything worse and continue to deny the obvious: There is no future without an act of collective responsibility that forces the political system to give a comprehensive public response already required by our National Constitution.
* Professor of #Constitutional Law and #Critical Law Studies.
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#hiding #environmental #crisis #accelerating
