2012: the year we did least to safeguard the future
The world did not end in 2012 as the Mayans predicted, but as George Monbiot documents in a superbly authored piece in The Guardian the other day, humankind is certainly doing its best to engineer such an outcome. The article is a superb summary of my feelings about 2012, and why it is likely to be remembered as the year we did least at the time we needed to do most.
It is probably a little harsh to lay the entire blame with humankind in the broad sense. It is our political representatives that are most at fault, as inaction has come to characterise discourse at both national and international levels.
To talk of keeping the average temperature increase to 2 degrees or less by the end of the century now appears to be sheer folly. Meanwhile, biodiversity loss is intensifying at an alarming rate with some quite profound consequences for human survival on the planet.
Where will the leadership come from in 2013?