George Monbiot, writing in the _Guardian_ yesterday, proposes the idea of a '100-year Parliamentary committee' to speak up for the interests of future generations. This idea to end the short-termism of too much politics is helpful, but not [I fear] robust enough to actually safeguard the interests of generations as yet unborn. Here is a tentative suggestion of a more robust alternative: That every major decision made at any level of government should be subject to potential veto by an individual or small group charged exclusively with having regard to the interests of the future inhabitants of this, our one and only planetary home. The name I think it natural to invest these proposed guarantors of the future with would perhaps be congenial to the newspaper that Monbiot writes in: I think that they should be called guardians...
I would welcome comment on this idea. Is it a good one? Or is it too 'out there'?
Let's see what Rupert's readers think...
Comments
This reminds me of the old house of Lords. There's a culture among some of the still-landed gentry, that they want a great great grandson to inherit their estate one day.
Is this the kind of outlook you are looking for? :)
The point is: something more than mere short-termist representation seems to be needed. So what is the answer?
Elections will give you one sort of person, quangocracy another, dictatorship another, etc. Whether a dictator is supposed to be, ideologically, a champion of the common man or not rarely seems to make any difference to what they actually do. Ditto, I suspect, quangos and the environment.