by Naomi Klein, CNN, USA - Again and again, policymakers ignore mountains of evidence warning of catastrophe, opting instead to roll the dice and hope for the best.
There are all kinds of explanations for what drives this sort of short-term decision-making, with greed and hubris cited most frequently. Less discussed, but possibly more important, is the phenomenon that the people taking the risks often feel distinctly distant from, if not outright superior to, the people most endangered by their decisions.