Alex Steffen comes up with a term that really defines so much of what is happening (or not happening)
Excerpt from this older story from Treehugger (February 2021). It escaped me when published. I’m posting a link to it now because the concept of “predatory delay” is more relevant today than it was a year and half ago. Excerpt:
Twitter can be an incredible time suck, but also an incredibly valuable tool of communication, as demonstrated by a true master of the medium, Alex Steffen. In a recent tweetstorm, Alex looks at Houston (and a lot of other events) in new and different terms: Predatory delay.
Predatory delay: "the blocking or slowing of needed change, in order to make money off unsustainable, unjust systems in the meantime." It is not delay from the absence of action, but delay as a plan of action - a way of keeping things they way they are for the people who are benefiting now, at the expense of the next and future generations.
Alex blames the older generations that mostly control government, in and out of political office. ("It's all one big dynamic. Older people getting rich—unprecedentedly rich—by dismissing their obligations to society & young people's future.”)
It is all about shading, about casting doubt, about looking for reasons to delay action. It could be flood control in Houston, building affordable housing for young people, getting rid of cars. There is always an answer.
It is something we have talked about here and on Treehugger - the older generation resisting change, pushing it all of to the next generation, after convincing themselves that scientists could be wrong and it isn't as bad as they say.
Predatory delay is government policy these days in almost every country. We know it is inevitable that we have to reduce the number of cars on the road and get them off fossil fuels as quickly as possible but instead we build highways and reduce fuel efficiency.
