The climate change issue is usually addressed either as a natural catastrophe or a problem that can be corrected through small changes in our lives. But few make a connection between the current economical order and our problems with the weather. The truth is that the whole way of understanding Economy should be changed.
The current economical order is responsible for the way we understand employment and social issues. Employment and social policies should be ruled by a sustainable use of the natural resources. For start, if in your country there is an amount of people that woks in a very old-fashioned and polluting industry (i.e. coal mining), and the company wants to close it up, the Government finds it easier to subsidise the company so that the miners will not be unemployed. Finding jobs for or recycling 50-year-old miners is a very complicated task. It is easier, and apparently cheaper, to pollute.
The shift to a knowledge-based economy will turn into a big loss of employment. To better face such a situation, we should prepare a welfare system that better protects the environmental interests. The shift to a knowledge based economy needs a modern social system in which our environment is as protected and ensured as our human well beings. Through the current system we only protect our lives, but proceed to the destruction of our surroundings. This way sooner or later there will not be resources to maintain any social system. Our idea of work has to be changed. It may be cheaper to lose a hundred jobs if that means that Nature is going to suffer less and we are not losing nature resources or biodiversity. Governments should provide better alternatives for the unemployed coming from polluting industries, subsidies should be given rather to non-polluting and innovative industries.
There are Green alternatives to the current world economical order, and to the social welfare system. The notion of basic income, which is built upon the idea that we work to live and not live to work has not been taken serious by the states and studied by governments. It would lead to a change in the economical order and would improve the shift to a knowledge based economy, in which the resources would not be as threaten as they are now.
The welfare of the planet depends on a sustainable use of the resources. Together with energy efficiency and energy saving is the way to stop the consequences of climate change. We should ask our Governments to take the lead and not focus only in the consumer. To move to a greener understanding of economy and the welfare system, governments should focus in:
• helping polluting industries to shift, offering subsidies for long life learning of the employees
• helping new and innovative SMEs and help industry in general to shift to the knowledge-based economy
• subsidize specific green sectors: organic farming, renewable energies, building isolation materials
• starting studies on the basic income and ways of implementation
Climate change is directly linked to world economy and it should be addressed by our Governments in an international level. Asking the consumers alone to change their everyday live is not enough. But we cannot forget our power as such consumers: we must ask both companies and governments to change up their minds and start thinking on the global welfare, rather than only in the economic welfare.