“It can be safely said that no widely applicable economic models have been developed specifically for the upcoming era.”  Here we go again – another global report on the dangers of climate change and a warning that the world is woefully unprepared for the approaching onslaught.  The problem is that there have been so many such reports in the last two decades that we reflexively perform the brain equivalent of the eye roll over the sheer repetitiveness of it all. Yet, there was something more alarming in the report produced for the United Nations by Bios – an independent research centre based in Finland.  Its conclusions were stark: neither governments, citizens or capitalism are anywhere near having the developed capacity to meet what is about to come.  For years we have been told that once the corporate sector gets its act together, when governments reach across the aisle to prepare effective legislation, or when citizens develop the awareness to consume less, waste less and live more sustainably, then it will all be set right.  The difficulty is that, on all three fronts, we are incapable of acting sufficiently to find new ways of still having the good life without destroying the planet in the process. As if to prove the point, both the United States and Canada had a tough time of things last week – trade deals falling apart, political gamesmanship, and the indefinite cancellation of the Kinder Morgan pipeline due to a legal ruling.  In other words, our politics is only adding to the problem, and regardless of which party gets elected, promises that are made on sustainability aren't even close to being achieved. Are we surprised?  How can a partisan politics that spurns cooperation and concessions ever achieve environmental targets?  Can a capitalism that generates massive wealth that destroys collective prosperity as it also assaults the planet be of any help when it can't see past the next fiscal quarter?  And can voters show enough collective urgency to grow from consumers to citizens when the new iPhone or Tesla is about to be released? This is what the report is talking about and it's got plenty of data to back it up:

• The Arctic is thawing even faster than anyone anticipated
• Animals are going extinct at 1000 times the normal rate
• More and more cities are enduring 120-degree heat for the first time in their history
• One-half of the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest, has died since 2016

To go on with such examples is somewhat pointless, because we are already more than aware.  And yet we do go on – in our dysfunctional politics, bottom-line capitalism and manic consumerism – as though we'll get it, if we just keep moving ahead.  Tell that to the people in California or Australia who come from all political perspectives but who watch as their house is destroyed by fire, or their reef through material indulgence.  To see them press governments, corporations, people – everyone – to pull together is moving to watch, but it will take more than urgings on our screens to save the future for our children. Such conclusions drive the enemies of climate change to distraction, but it also prompts the forces of democracy in sufficient numbers to turn their collective eyes away from the solutions that will be required to get this right because we will all have to pay a price in the recovery. The Bios report has done us a great service in reminding us that the very structures we utilize to co-exist together – our capitalism, our votes, our ability to share wealth – are actually incapable of assisting us to develop the solutions necessary for survival.  The ongoing inability of our politics to find common ground in the climate debate, or for the globe's financial elites to invest their fabulous yields sufficiently into new technologies, should be telling us something.  We require different economies, a more comprehensive politics, and citizens that forego some of the pleasures of the present to guarantee a prosperous and sustainable future. Ultimately, it will be our democracy that will decide all this.  It's supposed to be the greatest political system ever invented in all of history, but is it capable of facing perhaps the greatest challenge the world has ever known?  The Bios report doesn't think so.  We could prove it wrong, but that would require that we vote, invest and consume differently.  Democracy works when we act, but right now we just have too many other things on our minds to focus our collective energies on humanity's ultimate challenger. Glen Pearson was a career professional firefighter and is a former Member of Parliament from southwestern Ontario.  He and his wife adopted three children from South Sudan and reside in London, Ontario.  He has been the co-director of the London Food Bank for 32 years.  He writes regularly for the London Free Press and also shares his views on a blog entitled “The Parallel Parliament“.   Follow him on twitter @GlenPearson.