The world is spinning out of control.
A new report (http://bit.ly/tiXfGN) from the International Energy Authority (hardly a bunch of dangerous radicals) says we now have 5 years to significantly reverse the continuing growth in fossil-fuelled power stations. If we don’t, and there is lots of evidence suggesting we won’t, then by 2017 the planet will have reached the point at which we can no longer safely presume we can control climate change – “the door will be closed forever”.
Meanwhile, the Euro economic crisis deepens. Alasdair Darling chillingly argues the situation is “worse than 2008”. Governments topple as the markets dictate what must be done and by whom. Increasingly, the stark choice becomes clearer: democracy or markets.
Sleeping with the enemy
It’s long been a proud point of principle of mine never to agree with John Redwood MP. So imagine my angst when on Radio 4 yesterday he said there was a crisis of democracy in Europe, as governments fell only to be replaced by others (increasingly led by technocrats not politicians) seeking to implement the same austerity measures – “where is the role of citizens and democracy in all this?” Where indeed?
Whatever his cynical motivation for suggesting it, George Papandreou’s proposal of a referendum on the austerity programme in Greece at least raised the point about people having a say in this undemocratic rush to implement “the will of the markets”. Citizens in every country should have a right to vote on the draconian austerity programmes being foisted on them – virtually all the Governments lack a democratic mandate for them.
Who are “the markets”?
In the battle between democracy and the markets, we need to remind ourselves of something very important: there is no such thing as “the markets”. In reality, “the markets” is a term for the formal and informal mechanisms by which the super rich elite decides what is in its best interests. A brilliant recent article in New Scientist (http://bit.ly/nG1Tqw) recently showed that 147 big companies effectively control 40% of the global economy.
And remember these are the same people who brought about the financial collapse in the first place. And the same people who drive the inexorable consumption of the planet’s natural resources and resultant climate change. And I feel obliged to mention that these same people literally consume a vastly disproportionate amount of the world’s resources due to their grotesquely extravagant lifestyles. These people ARE “the markets” that we are told we must obey and which trample over our democracy.
Don’t want to say I told you so but…
In March, I posted a blog - Democracy and the Market – which concluded: “Greater citizen involvement will increasingly challenge the right of the markets to trample all over what people need and want. The dominant issue for the next year or two will be which of these trends wins out - democracy or marketisation.”
Democracy must win this battle – people should decide, not the unaccountable super-rich elite of “the markets”.
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