by Dr. David McGrogan , Daily Sceptic:

Current political discourse has a peculiar pre-occupation with controlling the future. Hence, on the one hand we increasingly seem to be governed by deadlines: 2030 for the UN Sustainable Development goals; 2035 for the ending of sales of new petrol and diesel cars; 2040 for the making of cycling and walking “the natural choices for shorter journeys“; 2050 for Net Zero; and so on and so forth. And on the other hand, predicting, forecasting and modelling the future has become an obsession of government everywhere in the world, made most obvious during the Covid era (when “we must do X because, if we extrapolate from where we are now, Y will result if we do nothing” became the governing structure of our entire lives), but evident across the piece, with climate change being the most notable example.