The world needs good, intelligent leadership after at least a decade without it
Thanks to the recent awarding of Nobel Peace Prize, Climate Change has effectively been thrust into the political Zeitgeist, and simultaneously, shoved American Al Gore onto the political platforms. His country is due for another election next year. While Gore maintains that the climate crisis is not political, many Democrats seized the opportunity following Gore’s acceptance of the prize (which he shares with the UN climate change panel) to politicize the issue, and isolate the current US president and his Republican party.
Candidates were quick to praise Gore*, but this stream of political flattery would undoubtedly slow if Gore were to run himself. Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama and John Edwards were all effusive towards the man who was narrowly edged out of the 2000 US election. A White House spokesman, rather than the president himself, said Mr. Bush ‘shared’ the thrill of Gore’s achievements.
“We Want Gore”
Meanwhile, according to The Times (London), Gore’s supporters took out a full-page advertisement in the New York Times essentially ‘begging’ him to announce his candidacy. Apparently, for now at least, this remains an improbable scenario.
In fact, astute leadership is sorely lacking not only in the USA, but all over the world. In Africa, even in the so-called ‘model’ democracy of South Africa, there’s a leadership vacuum as this country heads to a crucial election in 2008. Just north is Zimbabwe where leadership has gone awry as Robert Mugabe continues to turn Zimbabwe into the world’s basket case.
Leadership in South Korea
When I lived in South Korea I was astonished to learn of the political intransigence – the nothing-doing attitude towards North Korea. To allow a situation for both countries to remain ‘technically at war’ seemed to me to be very risky. So perception of South Korean leadership was, to my mind, a bit ‘iffy’ in terms of North Korea. It is good to say that this unpleasant situation – the North-South stalemate – has seen significant progress in recent days.
In other countries too, Britain, the Middle East and the United States in particular, we’re not seeing the sort of charismatic leadership that the world needs to see.
I suspect the reason for this is that voters worldwide are too distracted to care. Happily this is happening, but for a slew of very unhappy reasons.
Future Shock
Ignoring the converging bad weather systems was always going to allow us temporary party time. Now those storms are upon us. A future characterized by unaffordable oil is now undeniable, along with its concomitant side-effects: housing markets going into recession, inflation, and reduced buying power – worldwide – for the consumer.
The Cost of Bad Weather
At the same time, the weather is becoming a phenomenon that is increasingly intruding into our daily lives. Now high food prices are being blamed not only on higher fuel inputs, but on crop failures due to severely erratic weather. This two pronged devil’s fork is only likely to get worse. Other side-effects of extreme weather storms include massive infrastructural damage, electrical blackouts and other injurious effects at a time when costs are already hurting both macro and micro-economic units.
Austere Message
And that’s the urgent and austere message we’re faced with. Things are likely to get worse. Which means even under the best leadership, there is very little we can do beyond what we are increasingly being forced to do. The planet’s weather is now so far along it’s feedback loop that cutting emissions now will have negligible effects for this generation.
Stabilizing Force
What a leader like Al Gore can bring to the world, is a sense of sanity; a restored sense of humanity. This is a vital ingredient as resources become increasingly depleted, and countries find themselves tempted to go to war for what they don’t have. With Al Gore at the helm of the world’s most powerful economy, and the world’s most powerful military, one assumes this either would not happen, or that he would temper the severity of whatever the crash (economic, environmental and geopolitical) when it comes.
The likes of Noam Chomsky would have us believe that, in the end, our leaders are really just speakers, puppets really, for a powerbase. This ought to be composed of voters, but is usually a subtle and unseen power club of corporates and other economic and political players. While it is true that government’s overt mission is to serve it’s constituents (it’s voters), their feedback is seldom fair or transparent. We know that government often find ways not to invest taxpayers money in the interest in their shareholders, so that over time increasingly substantial fractions are withered away.
Thus wherever there is a leadership vacuum, two primary requirements must be met. An activated and interested set of constituents. These voters need to remain involved, and actively pursue accountability, results and responses. The second is a leader and leadership team who are genuinely altruistic, honestly engaged as agents and representatives whose interests are their own. This implies that we and our leaders need to refocus on urgent priorities, as the world changes gears and the storm clouds gather.
*Background for this article from ‘Nobel prize puts Gore at centre of election’ – from The Times (London)
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