A Climate Of Change Ripe For Advantageous Instability
So we shall argue and we’ll compromise and realize that nothing’s ever changed
Arjuna Seneviratne
Everything changes. Including the climate. We seem to have forgotten that. We believe that we can somehow wish this change away or use some sort of mantra to prevent that universal principle of “anithya” from affecting the climate. We cannot.
Change isn’t exactly a bad thing as we all know. However, instability certainly is. When things are in flux for any length of time, things don’t just change. They fall apart. The operative word here is “things” – in the plural. Four: the fiscal thing, the food thing, the energy thing and the climate thing. All are very much in flux, very intrinsically interconnected, very politicized and very much in the news. One thing that is not in the news is the one thing that seems to be relatively stable and unchanging inside of this roily, shifty gruel.
Attitude.
We think we can respond to these life threatening crises by holding desperately on to phraseology such as “our ways of life”, “businesses as usual”, “this was the way then and this will be the way now” even though they were the cause of this mess. We think we can pack, couch or sugar coat the same tired, useless models in new phrases such as “alternatives sources”, “sustainable development”, “nuancing and contextualizing”, “common but differentiated responsibilities”. We go from RIO to COP, from G8 to G77, from OECD to UNDG, from FAO to IFAD, uprooting ourselves from one watering hole and heading off to the next, always moving, always fluxing, always changing in a quixotic effort to find “stability”.
The reason why we make like nomads is because stability is not a goal. Rather, it is a ruse.
British Muslims Should Stand Up And Say It: There Is Nothing Islamic About Child Marriage
December 2, 2013
This is a column about Muslims and child marriage. I hesitated before writing it. When I pointed out the prevalence of anti-Semitism and homophobia within British Muslim communities earlier this year, I was accused by some of my co-religionists of “selling out”, of “fuelling Islamophobia”.
By Mehdi Hasan - Read more
