Asleep at the wheel, accelerating towards the precipice

There is currently an enquiry into our media, precipitated mainly by scandals in the Murdoch press empire in Britain. Media ownership in Australia is highly concentrated, and news coverage and commentary are highly biased towards the interests of the presently powerful. Serious discussions, like this, of our real needs are given little space.

The chief executive of the Fairfax empire recently argued the case in public for avoiding any increase in regulation of the media. A longer string of platitudes and clichés it would be hard to find, for example about "freedom" of the press, "quality journalism", lack of bias, the need for strong scrutiny of government (no argument, I'd just like to see some scrutiny that goes deeper than he-said, she-said) and so on.

Such a fatuous recitation of self interest, and such a complete failure to address the highly constricted state of public discussion, is further evidence of how oblivious are influential people to our real needs. The media are the means by which a society conducts its affairs. The people have every right to ensure the discussion is as full as possible. We are fools to have let a handful of people become the gatekeepers of our social and political conversation.

Reasonable estimates say that humanity is now using the Earth's resources at a rate about 50% above what it can provide. In the rich countries we use resources about 400% faster than they can be renewed. We are in a state of overshoot. Unless we change our strategy very soon, our societies will not only revert to the level of wealth we had many decades ago, but we will suddenly become much poorer, because we are degrading the Earth. We are reducing its capacity to provide even as we increase our demands on it.

It is actually possible to rapidly increase the efficiency with which we use resources, so that we could reduce the pain of the imminent crisis. However it is not in the interests of the presently powerful. Nor therefore is it in the interests of the prostitute governments they sponsor. Therefore we carry on, not only with business as usual but with growth, accelerating towards the precipice. As Jared Diamond says, societies may choose failure or success, it is up to them.