From the BBC comes this highly relevant article about the challenges of modern democracy. It highlights several flaws with the nature of Western governance and then highlights the key issue:

The time has come to face an inconvenient reality: that modern democracy – especially in wealthy countries – has enabled us to colonise the future. We treat the future like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people, where we can freely dump ecological degradation, technological risk, nuclear waste and public debt, and that we feel at liberty to plunder as we please.

The whole piece is worth reading.