Don't ditch democracy to save the planet. Make it better
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Don't ditch democracy to save the planet. Make it better

Before you envy China for their recent climate seriousness, consider the advantages of democratic decision making.

A question for people alarmed by the climate crisis and the apparent inability of democracies to confront it with the decisiveness it demands: If we could have effective government action that would solve our warming problem and save humanity and Earth’s other life forms—but the methods and processes were nondemocratic—would we embrace it?

Some would. As scientist and environmental philosopher James Lovelock puts it, climate change is so threatening “it may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.” As environmental studies professor Dale Jamieson wrote a decade ago, climate change poses the largest collective-action program our species has ever faced. “Sadly,” he says, “it is not entirely clear that democracy is up to the challenge.”

I for one am not ready to give up on democracy and support an any-means-necessary assault on climate change. And I think there’s good reason for others to hang in there, too.

Whatever it takes?

It’s understandable if some democracy proponents are casting envious eyes at China (more on China in a moment), or at some of the carbon-reduction scenarios described in Kim Stanley Robinson’s near-future novel The Ministry for the Future. In both, we see a seriousness about tackling the climate problem that is hard to find in the democracies of the Western world today.

As “tackling” suggests, carbon mitigation gets a little rough in the Robinson novel. In addition to an international climate-protection agency with real power, the book imagines a black-ops unit that is sort of/kind of attached to the climate agency and uses violence to hasten the end of certain carbon-spewing economic activities. Enough petroleum-burning airliners are shot out of the sky to discourage anyone from flying on them anymore, forcing a fast transition to alternative fuels and other forms of air travel. Fossil fuel-burning cargo ships are sunk, forcing an analogous switch-over to clean energy in that sector.

Is that what it’s going to take to solve the problem of the century?

COP (the UN’s “Conference of the Parties”) gives us a real-world example of multi-national, democratic attempt to get the world to act together against climate degradation. The results have been less than spectacular. How long before patience runs out?

In the Robinson novel, mass death caused by a savage heat wave is the last straw for India. Its government takes unilateral action, shooting particles into the sky to dim the blazing sun. There’s just one sun, of course, so the rest of the world must live with India’s action.

It’s not hard to imagine such a thing happening in the real world. If international institutions continue to sputter—always more process, always more bureaucracy—might it not seem heroic, or at least justifiable, if one fed-up country were to shout “Enough is enough!” and take dramatic, unilateral action?

It might. Supposing it didn’t have consequences even worse than the original crisis, à la “Snowpiercer.”

Those committed to democratic forms of government know that in some situations—especially crises—there’s not always time and space for a democratic process. I went through something like this at a college I used to work for, a school whose culture valued consensus decision-making and the opportunity for the campus and alumni community to have a voice in decisions.

Here’s what happened: The school was going through a full-blown crisis. The board held an emergency meeting in New York at which it made a key decision. The president dispatched me back to campus with instructions for a series of immediate actions my staff colleagues and I were to take to implement the board decision and inform key constituencies.

As I gathered my coworkers to convey the action steps, instead of “Okay, let’s do this,” I ran into a debate about the advisability of the president’s orders. “Wouldn’t it be better if we did this? Wouldn’t it be better if we did that?” The clock ticked; the crisis worsened. The moment stands out in my memory as an example of how it’s sometimes necessary to stop debating and start acting.

Many would say we have reached that point on climate.

Which leads me to China. What are we to make of the fact that of all the major powers in the world, it’s one with an authoritarian government and a one-party political system that appears to be doing the most, the fastest, to adopt clean energy technologies and strategies?

Less than meets the eye

Much of what China is doing on the climate front is impressive. Its carbon-reduction goals and achievements, its clean-energy investments and installations, its global leadership in electric vehicles and other low-carbon technologies—these and more paint a picture of a country that is serious, competent, and effective when it comes to climate.

But don’t be too impressed, and don’t make the mistake of thinking its nondemocratic, command-and-control government is the reason for the good stuff China is doing.

China’s climate actions are hardly above reproach. For example, critics note that it is still heavily reliant on coal. Its 2060 goal for carbon neutrality is not exactly ambitious. Its policies bespeak an outsize reliance on adaptation at the expense of carbon mitigation. And its lack of transparency—a consistent problem with nondemocratic governments—means the data it reports is subject to manipulation and cannot be trusted.

When it comes to China’s successes, at least some of the credit must be given to factors other than its form of government: for example, a culture that values living in harmony with nature, and a high-rev capitalism that sees rich market opportunities in clean energy.

Its apparent advantage as a country with an autocratic government could just as easily be its undoing. To quote a recent Brookings Institution report, “Increasing centralization throughout the Chinese system and its penchant for centrally directed and over-engineered solutions threaten the country’s capacity to adapt to rising temperatures.”

Squandering eyes and ears

Over history, authoritarian governments have tended to devastate the environment rather than protect it. Nondemocratic governance often correlates with a drive for short-term economic gain, the fastest-possible extraction and exploitation of natural resources, and a deaf ear to the people on the ground who are suffering the negative consequences.

Nondemocratic governments tend to deny themselves the first-hand knowledge and subtle solutions that can come from listening to the people closest to what’s happening.

It calls to mind an insight gleaned from my mountaineering days. In the team talk before one of my climbs, the leader did an especially good job of explaining the role of the followers. Yes, he had the skills and training, he knew the route, and he would be first in the line. But he was not infallible. Rather than blindly follow him, he asked us to pay close attention to where we were and where we were going—and to speak up if he was about to lead us the wrong way, possibly into danger, or if we noticed worrisome changes in the conditions that he might have missed.

That is exactly the scenario that played out on a subsequent expedition I was on with different climbers—a mini-mutiny by several members of the team (present company included) that forced the leader to rethink the unsafe anchor he had set and find a more secure way to fix the line.

That’s one of the the advantages of democratic governments: eyes and ears on the ground, with an opportunity for those doing the seeing and hearing to influence the direction in which society goes.

Better democracy

The progressive Christian author and activist Jim Wallis has a line about religion gone wrong that applies to this conversation. Confronted with toxic forms of right-wing Christianity, Wallis responded that the solution to bad religion was not no religion; it was better religion.

So it is with democracies. The question isn’t whether we’re going to have democracy. It’s what kind of democracy we are going to have: one captive to profit-obsessed capitalism and self-interested misinformation-spreaders, as we have now? Or one true to the interests and well-being of the people?

It’s better democracy we need, not the temporary suspension of democracy (per Lovelock) or the permanent replacement of democracy with forms of government that appear better equipped to act on climate (emphasis on appear).

In pursuit of a sustainable world, we must employ sustainable methods. The processes by which we arrive at decisions, and the tactics we use to implement them, must be suffused with the democratic values we envision in the better world for which we strive: They must be just, truthful, inclusive, ruled by law not fiat, and scientifically solid.

Why? Because they’re right. Because they work.  

Democratic action on climate, done through democratic means, is no easy feat. Nor is the work to create the kind of high-functioning democracies needed for the job. Be assured that intelligent, conscientious people and organizations have no shortage of ideas for how to get there. (See for example this Pew report and this article by the Fulcrum.) Bear in mind that democratic reforms that seem impossible now might be more than achievable in another decade or two.

As Adam Lee wrote very recently, democracy, when it works well, is the best form of government.

That’s true. For the sake of a livable future, let’s get it working.

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