King Canute, Don Quixote and climate change

What we should be doing about it has been acknowledged by the UN. Here are their 8 Millennium Goals, the objective is to achieve them by 2015:

1.        Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

2.        Achieve universal primary education

3.        Promote gender equality and empower women

4.        Reduce child mortality

5.        Improve maternal health

6.        Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

7.        Ensure environmental sustainability

8.        Global partnership for development

Every item on this list requires political will and genuine leadership, commodities in rather short supply. All are achievable. Better to encourage division and debate about the reality of climate change. Divert attention by setting up other windmills to keep the electors amused, rather than grapple with issues that require thinking outside our political predilections.

Despite the many faults of the capitalist system, it’s still the world’s best hope for achieving these goals. I’d prefer to try to fix the problems in the system than rely on some socialist vision. Exchanging commissars for capitalists, history tells me, will benefit nobody except the commissars. Easier to get rid of the criminals in our existing system.

Big business is the dominant player in the renewable energy business. BP and Shell are major players in solar and natural gas. AGL is a major investor in wind farms in Australia. The profit motive that drives them can have positive results. It’s hard to see it happening at all without huge amounts of capital.