The Brexit deadline is approaching at the end of March 2019.
Before the Brexit referendum, political were playing their political and power games, in-fighting and trying to score points over each other to further their own careers and political agendas. This adversarial system is what led to the Brexit referendum. There was no reasoned, in-depth analysis, no logic, no strategy to make the world a better place. Just the two key drivers of human society : greed and aggression.
Since the results of that referendum, which was not democratically nor legally binding, what has happened? More of the same, more power games, politicians sabotaging each other, fighting, struggled to remain in power or to gain power, all the usual games of greed and aggression. Now it is mid-2018 and a no-deal Brexit in early 2019 is looking increasingly likely. Actually I am not so concerned by Brexit. The British were never really committed to European Union values and vision and I think that the EU will do better without Britain. Similarly the financial sectors of the City of London will remain influential after Brexit – in fact once the uncertainty around the type of Brexit is over and it has actually taken place, I expect the City will thrive once again in a less regulated environment outside the EU.
What does concern me is that this is that Brexit is a relatively simple task compared to addressing global warming and climate change. If Brexit cannot be implemented sensibly because of greed and aggression then what chance do we have of dealing with really complex politics and socio-economic interests around climate change. This summer around the world people are overheating in the warmest summer for many years. The public is starting to realise something needs to be done but fails to realise that it is too late. The damage has been done. The atmosphere has already been changed. All that can be done now is to try to limit additional dangerous changes to the atmosphere. However if greed and aggression prevent us from implementing something comparatively simple like Brexit, involving one country leaving one geographical area, then how likely is it that we can bring all countries together to agree and implement the necessary actions to limit further damage to the climate. Actually this only partly concerns me as I really do believe that it is anyway too late. We already have one degree of warming globally compared to pre-industrial levels and that is already leading to the worst forest fires, unprecedented heatwaves, scorched agriculture, water shortages and the like. Two degrees of warming is now inevitable and more will occur unless we change our societies drastically. To do that we would first need to rid the human animal from its innate greed and aggression. That is not going to happen. All we can do is stand by and watch what unfolds.