From Matthew Stevens, Sydney, Australia
Susannah Fisher’s take on the COP30 negotiations in Brazil is hopeful, but I can’t share her faith in relying on government or corporations to do anything meaningful. The common feature of most administrations is the setting of short-term goals, because democratic governments don’t want to plan for a future for which they won’t get credit, and autocratic governments work to stay in power for their own benefit, not that of the populace (1 November, p 21).
This leaves citizen-driven projects. Because we all focus on our immediate needs, if enough of us are motivated to overcome threats that affect us directly, we can achieve meaningful progress, particularly through shaping market demand. This creates a role for the more motivated among us to share ideas with which we can all engage. For this, we will have to bypass the gatekeepers of social media. An open-source, distributed-host, Wikipedia-like model for the exchange of ideas might work.
