Daniel and Tony Judt: Generations in the Balance
DANIEL Had I been 18 in November 2008, I would have voted for Barack Obama. However, being 14, I settled for voicing my support for him and expressing joy at his election. I believed, innocently, that his administration would put its foot down, stamping out the environmental crisis that his predecessors had allowed to fester unnoticed. I felt Mr. Obama knew how to do the right thing morally, even if it meant going against the “right thing” politically.
Less than two years later, I have become hugely pessimistic about the moral resolve of our government and corporate world. Deepwater Horizon has been the tipping point. I was already skeptical: an increase in offshore drilling, our government’s passive stance at Copenhagen and the absence of any environmental legislation saw to that.
But BP made me realize that the generation in office just doesn’t get it. They see the environmental crisis in the same light as they see political debacles and economic woes. Politics pass and economies rebound, but the environment doesn’t. It’s that sense of “We’ll get that done right after we have dealt with everything else” that makes me so angry. The world is not an expendable resource; fixing the damage you have inflicted will be the issue for my generation. It is that simple.
TONY Well, I am 62 and I did vote for Barack Obama. I held out no great hopes. It was clear from the outset that this was someone who would concede rather than confront — and that’s a shortcoming in a politician, if not in a man. We have seen the consequences: not in the Middle East, nor in economic regulation, nor over detainees, nor in immigration reform has Mr. Obama followed through. The audacity of hope?
As for the corporations, we baby boomers were right to be cynical. Like Goldman Sachs, oil companies are not benign economic agents, serving a need and taking a cut. They are, in Theodore Roosevelt’s words, “malefactors of great wealth.” But our cynicism dulled our response to truly criminal behavior: “They would do that, wouldn’t they?” It is one thing to watch while Goldman Sachs pillages the economy, quite another to be invited to stand aside while BP violates the Gulf Coast. Yes, we should be a lot angrier than we are.
We are staring into our future and it does not work. The gush of filth is a reminder that we have surrendered our independence to a technology we cannot master. Our energies are misdirected to expensive foreign wars whose purposes grow ever more obscure. We rail at one another in “cultural” clashes irrelevant to our real problems.
Meanwhile, the clockwork precision of our classical constitution has ground to a halt — depending as it does on a consensus that no longer exists. Taking the long view, this is how republics die. “Someone” clearly has to do “something.” What do you propose?...