On the European debt crisis, like on climate change, many international leaders have had their heads in the sand. After all, it is often politically expedient to prioritise short-term gains over long-term consequences.

While Greece, and indeed several other Mediterranean countries, has languished for years in a miasma of debt and high unemployment, their leaders turned a blind eye to long-run trends, assuming (wrongly, as it turns out) that the system would correct itself in the end. Yet from the outset, there were signs pointing towards inevitable crisis. Despite the Maastricht Criteria for membership of the EU including an explicit requirement that the government deficit as a percentage of GDP be no more than 3%, Greece was still admitted to the Eurozone in 2000 with a budget deficit level of at least 3.7%. As the level of Greek deficit compounded, its Eurozone counterparts steadfastly overlooked its budgetary problems, concerned as they were with keeping a flawed but holistic institution intact.

For decades now a similar intransigence has plagued debate over climate change. Mounting scientific evidence suggests that decisive action to arrest the growth of fossil fuel emissions is vital for sustaining life on Earth. Yet some governments still appear complacent with a business-as-usual approach, ignoring warning signs and pursuing least-cost measures that appease populist pressure to maintain cheap and unimpinged growth, rather than taking meaningful actions to sustain the planetary resource base on which all growth depends.

With Greece, as with the climate crisis, the same attitude seems to prevail: a preoccupation with the short-run. How would the markets react to ‘Grexit’, or for that matter, to a formal debt default? Could one’s political fortunes in the polls weather the storm of seeking to curb carbon emissions if such policies impacted negatively on the cost of living? It is in this context that policies and decisions are made that serve immediate national and political interests at the expense of long-term sustainability. Arguably, the election of Alexis Tsipras’ left-leaning Syriza government in Greece’s January 2015 general election was one such example, where a populist appeal based on the platform of ending imposed austerity gained traction among voters seeking to avoid the bitter pill of addressing the debt problem on the troika creditors’ strict terms.

As for solutions, the international leaders seem resolved to stand by the tried and tested strategies of austerity measures in the beleaguered EU, and conferences and market-oriented schemes in response to climate change. The timeframe over which these polices are evaluated also speaks to the prevalence of short-termism. Taxpayers and shareholders expect visible results within one election cycle or even one financial year, or else the policy is deemed a failure; dumped in the too-hard basket as politically untenable. Thus, there is a profound disconnect between the long timescales of the debt and climate crises, and the limited time and resources devoted to policies to address them. There is no doubt that the Greek economy needs to be reformed as it is rebuilt, and this requires both a long term outlook and fundamental shifts in attitudes at the popular level. But for a country mired in recession, the overly restrictive capital controls which have inhibited growth and confidence in Greece are the antithesis of the policies which have helped stimulate economic recoveries throughout history. Meanwhile, climate policies have been geared towards applying market-based solutions such as emissions trading schemes, despite their effects being disproportionately small given the scale of the crisis at hand. If the most dire projections on global tipping points are accurate, these attempts at mitigation are too little, too late. In both cases, doggedly pursuing the same policies without adequately evaluating and adapting them to changing circumstances is the very definition of keeping one’s head in the sand.

These are long-term challenges, demanding policy responses that go beyond political survival to address long term interests, including economic sustainability and societal survival.

As the Paris Climate Summit in December looms, the world holds out hope that the 21^st Conference of the Parties, or COP 21, will not be another Copenhagen, and that a meaningful and legally binding agreement will be reached. After all, the new strategy of individual state-based commitments and the growing groundswell of support from civil society for international action on climate change are promising. But is yet another conference really the answer? Echoes of ‘it will be different this time around’ haunt each annual climate summit, just as they pervade the discourse around each international bailout of Greece. And time and again, the outcomes have been quick political fixes; short on substance, and long on rhetoric. They are designed to appease voters and shareholders here and now, often at the expense of aiming to prevent recurring or worsening crises in the future.

Now more so than perhaps ever before, short-termism is at its peak. Meanwhile, the migrant crisis is exacerbating the economic stresses on the fragile fabric of the EU. And as has been argued elsewhere, climate change acts as a threat amplifier in an already volatile region, producing a veritable Molotov cocktail of security challenges facing the twenty-first century. The question remains: how long can leaders turn a blind eye to these ominous signs for the not too distant future?

Freya is in her final year of a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney, majoring in History and Government and International Relations. She has a long-standing interest in international affairs, with particular research interests including climate change and sustainable development, international economic issues, Asia-Pacific geopolitics, and modern US history. Outside university, Freya has studied Italian and is presently learning Mandarin. Freya hopes to undertake a Master of Commerce in the future.