issue 56 － 请指教

sharpenioUID: 2695556

"Governments should focus more on solving the immediate problems of today rather than trying to solve the anticipated problems of the future"

The speaker claims that addressing immediate problems of today is more desired a demand to the government, comparing to solving anticipated problems in the future. While I agree that it is critical and crucial to the government to respond to urgent and immediate problems of the society in many cases, in my opinion, however, overemphasis of immediate problems could be problematic.

Undoubtedly, many immediate issues required more focus from the government. The obvious conditions are the extreme events such as terrorist attack and natural disaster. If the government does not respond timely, the events will lead to immediate chaos and disorder of a society and hence will detriment the stability of the society. Other than extreme events, the actions and efforts from government towards less urgent issues could be more desired too. The financial crisis of 2007 to present triggered by liquidity shortfall in the United States banking system , which later on spread to the whole world, is one of the examples. The financial crisis, though not as urgent as extreme event and cannot foresee to be solved within a short time span, has significantly negative impact on a huge scale- nearly everybody's daily life.
Such issues of course demand more focus from the governments.
Nevertheless, it should be also noticed that overemphasis on existing problems may result in harmful effect, especially in the long-run.
It is often the case that the government pays too much attention to the economy development while leaving the environment suffered. Climate change/global warming, caused by the accumulated greenhouse gases emitted by human social and economic activities back into the history, is such a case. The melting iceberg, rising sea-level and the predicted more severe climate condition after hundreds of years, as results of climate change/global warming, have ringed the alarm to the entire human-being society. Though the impact of climate change/global warming might not emerge yet or might not be significant in the short run, the harmful effects could eventually become catastrophic, and sadly, not reversible in the long run.
Such issues require no lesser efforts and immediate focus from the government too-otherwise the whole human-being society will sink.

Moreover, it is necessary and important to urge the government to spend more effort on future problems. In reality, it is not really happening in many of the cases that the government ignores immediate and urgent problems but rather that the government overemphasizes those requests.
Such phenomenon could be repeatedly observed in the history of governance. This maybe because of the government’s shortsighted leadership, as we human-being all have the tendency to react more on the immediate problems and overlook issues in the future. Other than that, from these governments’ angel, if they do not address the immediate demand from their citizen, they will risk the danger of forfeiting its tenure. As the results, it is more often the case that the government does have the capacity to foresee the future issues and well understand how problematic the consequence could be, while they still choose to emphasize the immediate problems while ignoring the future risks. Even though scientific research has proven the positive correlation between the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted due to fossil-fuel based economy development, and the climate change effect, the US government still refused to sign the Kyoto protocol. And governments from large countries like India and China all do not willing to commit to cap their greenhouse gases emission. The governments still emphasize economy development, despite how serious climate change effect could be, to the wellbeing of our future generation, to the sustainability of the earth.
Urging the governments to spend more efforts on future problem is needed.

Clearly, it is irreproachably that the government should focus more on immediate problems to ensure the stability and security of the society. But overemphasis on current issues could be shortsighted and could result in unwanted effect. What is more, urging the government to spend more efforts to future problem could be more desired to the society’s welfare in the long run.

sharpenioUID: 2695556

顶一下。。 大家给点意见阿