Climate change, terrorism and social injustice

What is the link between preventing terrorism, combatting climate change and tackling social injustice?

One link is that they all depend on the good will and consent of the public in implementing solutions; another is that each is being handled badly by the authorities who currently run the world.

Perhaps most important, however, is how they fit together: social injustice, with its extremes of wealth and poverty, power and powerlessness, is at the centre. Social injustice is the key factor, contributing on the one hand to natural instability in the form of ecological deficit (overuse of resources) and emissions leading to climate change, and on the other hand to the human response to such instability - terrorism (aggression born of impotence) and the witch-hunting, intolerant fear of 'the other'.

If you accept this analysis, then combatting both climate change and terrorism can be achieved only by tackling social injustice.

This is actually not such a tall order, given the enormous power of the electronic media, but it involves major changes in attitude - changes which are eagerly awaited by much of the population of the world. It may sound simplistic, but here goes.

Three new attitudes
1. Respect the poor and those who use few resources: this is not to say that we should glorify poverty, but we must start respecting and rewarding moderation - constant growth is not the best way of measuring success, as we are finding out to our cost.

2. Listen to the poor and allow 'ordinary' people to act: we assume that the world has to be run centrally, all of a piece, but is this natural? only mankind tries to control any more than a small section of territory. Listening is not the same as having a Big Conversation. Solutions must be implemented quickly by those who are most closely involved, not necessarily expert, sometimes whose only qualifications are that they belong to a particular area.

3. Be honest about failures, limitations and imperfections: in our consumer-driven society we try to achieve perfection and total safety, forgetting that we do so at someone else's expense and at the expense of the planet. We have no absolute right to total safety, because we are human, fallible, mortal and part of the fabric of the planet. If we are encouraged to demand it ('How can we make sure this never happens again?'), we lose sight of the fact that we are demanding for ourselves something that at least four fifths of the world will never be able to have.

Community media have a role to play
Media literacy (as in participating, ie. questioning, reporting and disseminating a message) and community media have a central role to play in making such changes happen. Whilst we still have the luxury of the internet and electronic communications (dependent as they are on the luxury of reliable electricity) we must make the widest use of them to spread this message and achieve such changes.

Let's move the focus away from hunting out extremism and instead focus on providing media access for all, so that people can share their own concerns and offer their own suggestions, no matter how small.

To paraphrase a Biblical saying: he who stops worrying about his own safety, and starts listening, will be safe.