May 22, 2017

Nothing to see here

editor:	Gurmeet Singh

Just a bunch of billionaires huddled around a glowing orb. Nothing to see here, folks. Go about your business.

Politics has been edging towards the comical for years now - with larger-than-life villains like Bin Laden, superheroes like Obama, and the oddball outsider like Donald Trump taking power for himself - but never has politics looked so much like a comic book. Just look at this photo from Trump's meeting with the Egyptian president and the Saudi king from over the weekend. I mean, their hands are literally on glowing orb in a darkened room - cronies and dark faces hang around in the back to give us that ultra-evil front-cover look: INTERNATIONAL SUPERVILLAINS UNITE! WHO WILL TAKE THEM DOWN? WHERE IS OBAMA NOW?

Off jet-skiing on Mars with Elon Musk probably. The problems for us in this are manifold. Namely - superheroes don't exist, but super problems do. It's tempting to buy-in to this kind of image, and believe that if only we toppled this international organisation of crooks and liars, we'd be set. But the truth is, the problems go deeper than a gang of unstable leaders like Trump and Putin. The truth is much more complex.

Life on earth is not guaranteed for humans. The planet is changing - we're not doing enough to respond to these changes. People are dying because of our failure to act.

And what's more - these problems of climate change, migration, food and water scarcity, and conflicts will only accelerate. We will only have more supervillains in power as people look to strongmen to deal with these problems. But we have to deal with these problems ourselves. Not wait for the superhero to come along in cape and underpants, and pull us from the burning building.