Earth in the Balance: on Government Reform


Politicians address immediate problems, not long-term ones

One reason many world leaders have difficulty responding to the environmental crisis is that the worst of the predicted effects seems decades away [while] millions of people are suffering in poverty right now. These are urgent problems. how do we at the same time acknowledge and confront a problem that seems to lie in our future?
Source: Earth in the Balance, page 46 Jul 2, 1993

Our leaders are ignoring the threat to the environment

Even after highly publicized warnings from virtually the entire global scientific community that the current pattern of our civilization is creating dramatic changes in global climate patterns. we are doing nothing to address the principal causes of this catastrophe in the making. We know from the history of climate changes that they can cause unprecedented social and political upheavals, especially in fragile, densely populated societies.
Source: Earth in the Balance, page 77 Jul 2, 1993

Polls and technology dominate politics, not substance

Aside from its uninspired response to the environmental crisis, our political system itself has now been exploited, manhandled, and abused to the point that we are no longer making consistently intelligent choices about our course as a nation. Thirty-second television commercials and sophisticated public opinion polling can now do more to manipulate the opinions of voters in two weeks than all the speeches and debates and political organizations together can accomplish in ten years.
Source: Earth in the Balance, page 167 Jul 2, 1993

  • The above quotations are from Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, by Al Gore.
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2012 Presidential contenders on Government Reform:
  Democrats:
Pres.Barack Obama(IL)
V.P.Joe Biden(DE)

Republicans:
Gov.Mitt Romney(MA)
Rep.Paul Ryan(WI) 		Third Parties:
Green: Dr.Jill Stein(MA)
Libertarian: Gov.Gary Johnson(NM)
Justice: Mayor Rocky Anderson(UT)
Constitution: Rep.Virgil Goode(VA)
Peace+Freedom: Roseanne Barr(HI)
Reform Party: André Barnett(NY)
AmericansElect: Gov.Buddy Roemer(LA)
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Page last updated: Apr 16, 2013