open Democracy News Analysis - Democracy and climate change: a story of failure, David Shearman - Comments

ForeignStudent on "Democracy and climate change: a story of failure "

ForeignStudent — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:18:33 +0000

OK: the problems were, as usual, liberty and democracy.
The same old story once again.

joatsimeon on "Democracy and climate change: a story of failure "

joatsimeon — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 03:54:06 +0000

The author seems to think democracy has "failed" because he and his faction haven't been able to get the populace to support them, with an addendum that they're being "constrained" because they can't stop people who disagree with them from organizing and speaking.

(I suppose by re-education camps and secret police? Nothing like a beating with lead-lined rubber hoses and a diet of grass soup to convince people, in Mr. Shearman's little Gulag.)

Ah... can we say "madness" and "hubris"? Yeah, thought so.

Dude, learn to assimilate the idea that your opinions are just your opinions and don't get any special privileges. You have a vote like everyone else, and that's IT.

Shearman's argument is profoundly dumb even on its own (fascistic) terms -- authoritarian governments are notoriously bad on environmental issues. The words "Aral Sea" come to mind; or the fact that China is currently adding 8MW of new coal-fired power generating capacity -every day-, mostly of older and highly inefficient and polluting types, and has not the slightest intention of stopping.

They -can't- stop; the government would be overthrown if they tried, and they know it. It's sort of why no democratic government will do anything of the kind either, only enforced with guns and street-riots rather than votes.

Plato suggested a corps of trained, expert "guardians" to run the state. Cicero demolished this with one immortal piece of dry wit: "Who will guard these guardians"?

The people are the -source- of political right and wrong; their voice is the voice of God. And every individual knows their own interests, and is the only legitimate judge of them. No "experts" need apply.

You can try to convince people that they should love lower living standards and more bureaucrats telling them what to do.

And others can tell them that you're full of it and spouting anti-human nonsense.

Three guesses as to which the people will chose. And no, you don't get to silence your critics.

Oh, and someone above thinks people in Cuba are "better off". This would be news to the hordes who stampede for the exit every time they get a chance. Before Castro, Cuba was the richest country in the Caribbean; now it's barely above Haitian levels, besides being a noxious dictatorship. Che Guevara was of course a mass killer, who ran the Cuban secret police before Castro sent him off to get (thankfully) killed.

richard on "Democracy and climate change: a story of failure "

richard — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 22:30:45 +0000

In a nutshell, the advantage of democracy is that it stops the leaders going power-mad. Something happens in the brain, probably in the amygdala nucleus to be more precise, of the unopposed leader. They all go nuts in the end, and the democratic process pulls them down, hopefully before they are completely raving. This is why even the most benign and lovable set of intellectuals would need replacing after a few years in power. They will either be replaced by a set of generals, or replaced in an election. We need more democracy, not less, in the service of people and planet. As others have said, the criticism levelled in the article is not against democracy itself, but for the sorry excuse for democracy that obtains in Australia, the USA and the UK.

ianniscarras on "Democracy and climate change: a story of failure "

ianniscarras — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:49:02 +0000

About a month ago I was campaigning for the Greek Green Party in the country's general election. You meet all sorts of strange people when campaigning, and you always have to be nice to them. My favourite, this time round, was a slightly mischevous middle-aged man, who twiddled his moustache, and, a sparkle in his eye, muttered, "I like you Greens. But my interests, they lie elsewhere!" The Greens got just over 1% in the election, not a spectacular triumph, but our voters were nearly all young, nearly all educated, and nearly all women. A vote for the future then. Democracy relies on the level of awareness of the demos, it can never be a panacea. But it does at least provide a framework for discussing the issues. And it is important to remember that on environmental issues the Soviet Union and today China, with no such framework, have, if anything, done worse. Iannis Carras, Athens, Greece.

jd.johnson on "Democracy and climate change: a story of failure "

jd.johnson — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:32:50 +0000

Let me see if I get this right. Democracy is the problem because in Australia and the U.S. (and elsewhere) conservative administrations have over the past decade or so subverted broad access and dissenting views in the policy-making process, politicized science, and proceeded in a wholly ideological manner to serve the interests of industry. This argument is moronic. How about trying democracy first? Then we might make a judgement on the basis of some attempt at a non-authoritarian approach to environmental (and other) problems. It hardly seems fair to take the Bush & Howard regimes as a baseline from which to assess the viability of democracy.

joefranks69 on "Democracy and climate change: a story of failure "

joefranks69 — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:26:47 +0000

The idea of democracy as the most desirable form of government has been remarkably successful throughout the world (at least until recently, when "democracy" began to be associated by some with what the U.S. did to Iraq). It is a compelling argument indeed that a government's legitimacy derives from the consent and approval it receives from the governed. Of course, every government is legitimate, since "legitimacy" means lawfulness and governments create the law; but the essential idea of democracy is that regardless of any particular government's claim to legitimacy, the only proper, ultimately "legitimate" source of law is the people themselves. Democracy is rule by the people - the people, meaning by all of the people equally, not by some people disproportionally - and requires that the people create law, or at least that they choose a few people to create law for them. This latter form of democracy, representative democracy, is thought to be untroublesome in that it does not betray the essence of the concept; in fact, democracy is thought to be unwieldy and incapable of implementation without it. The problem with this form of democracy - actually-existing democracy - is that it requires perfect information, meaning that the people know perfectly well what laws their representatives are creating. Furthermore, they must know what their interests are, and have an informed opinion on what means are best to attain the fulfillment of their interests. Ghandi once said that "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." One could also say that "I like your idea of democracy, but I do not like your democracies. Your democracies are so unlike your idea of democracy." The work that economist Joseph Stiglitz is best known for is his Information Economics, which overturned the traditional neoclassical assumption that free market systems feature perfect information, and demonstrated that due to the highly imperfect access market participants have to information, free markets are actually highly inefficient. This shortcoming of neoclassical economics is shared by democratic theory, and this is why our democracies are so unlike our idea of democracy. The people in a democracy do not have perfect access to information about the people campaigning to represent them or even about the various policy choices theoretically at their disposal. No serious analyst of the U.S. media, for instance, can argue that it actually provides the essential public service of informing the public about politicians, their country, the world around them or the various policies that the people might choose to implement. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" is a phrase ascribed to Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, abolitionist Wendell Phillips and others. Vigilance is not merely a state of mind; it requires information. Without an informed populace, democracy is an utter sham and liberty is unattainable. There is no liberty and no rule by the people where the people are un- or mis-informed; there is only rule by whichever group of people can best fool the people into voting them into power. This is illustrated in graphic detail in the United States today, where the people are ruled by the people who best use the vast propaganda apparatus of the media. The best campaigners truly serve only those upon whom they depend for their political success - those who pay for their multi-million dollar use of the media. The people do not rule, because they are not well-informed, and consequently cannot be vigilant. They cannot pay the price for liberty, and so do not enjoy it. Because most Unitedstatesians are perfectly ignorant of socialist thought, they have not the slightest idea why someone like Che Guevara would be against "freedom of speech" or "freedom of the press" - other than that he must have been a despotic, power-hungry madman. (Actually, his experience in Guatemala, where an elected democratic socialist leader was overthrown by the CIA's use of force and propaganda, was formative.) A painting by Cuban avant-garde artist Carlos Enríquez Gómez, entitled "Campesinos Felices" (Happy Peasants - you can see the painting here http://branddenotes.blogspot.com/2007/11/democracy-no.html) brilliantly explains why. In the foreground one sees a skeletal family, the embodiment of poverty and living death. In the background (along with a skeletal dog) one sees a flier on a post holding up the pathetic family's hovel. The flier features a pig in a fancy suit and top hat, with one word below - "Vote". Only a fool could suggest that Cuban peasants would be better off today if they had endured fifty more years of representative democracy and capitalism, and would not be, economically and socially, on par with their neighbors in Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. This is because economic elites can use their wealth to control the public argument. By putting up insurmountable roadblocks to perfect information, economic elites prevent actually-existing, representative democracies from embodying the essence of democracy: rule by the people. Hence the reason why our democracies are proving incapable of effectively dealing with climate change - and have proven incapable of addressing poverty - is that the people do not have the information that is a prerequisite to self-rule.

Anarch on "Democracy and climate change: a story of failure "

Anarch — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:42:14 +0000

It is a pity that the only alternative David Sherman can see is authoritarian (at least they kept the trains running on time? but of course, they didn't!). Aside from the unfortunate and ill thought out alternative to the failure of liberal democracy (bearing in mind that Australia is not a democracy, we are a parliamentary monarchy) there is little in his article with which I would disagree. But to crawl back to the patriarchal, authoritarian comfort of strong leaders or an intellectual elite (who magically will not secumb to the dangers of power) is a sad statement on the level of political discussion today. Elites have already led us, collectively, into endless violent disasters and ecological impoverishment. The authoritarian, centralised Chinese military dictators are faring even worse than fools like John Coward (or the future Mr Crudd for that matter). The ecology of the Chinese mainland is one of the sleepers waiting to awake and scare the pants off us all - they are, after all, the factory of the world. The future is an unknown land, and great challenges are ahead for us all. We need to look forward, not back. Trust in each other is perhaps a simple place to start, but great things can come from the smallest beginnings. Personally I would rather trust in the compassion and understanding of my neighbour and workmate than another elite scientist or leader or politician. A sustainable future is decentralised, low impact, libertarian, anti-patriarchal, anti-military, peaceful, collective - not centralised or determined by elites. Chris from Terra Australis

Democracy and climate change: a story of failure, David Shearman

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:14:02 +0000

It seems that some of the most perceptive brains in society have given up on an effective response to climate change. Stephen Hawking infers that mankind should colonise distant planets. James Lovelock thinks the remnants of humanity will seek refuge on the tropical shores of the Arctic. Scientific data now strongly suggests that physical and biological changes in the planet are increasingly greater than those defined by the modelling in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Despite the steadily rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, even countries expressing commitment are having little impact compared to the huge task in hand. Democratic governments continue to approve projects that will make reductions difficult if not impossible.

David Shearman is emeritus professor of medicine at Adelaide University, secretary of Doctors for the Environment Australia, and an independent assessor on the IPCC.

His most recent book (co-written with Joseph Wayne Smith) is The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, (Praeger, 2007)

In an openDemocracy article, Andrew Dobson contrasts this environmental inactivity with the speedy response to a recent international financial emergency (see "A climate of crisis: towards the eco-state", 19 September 2007). If governments can recognise a cyclical financial emergency and in an instant move heaven and earth (and billions of dollars, pounds sterling and euros) to contain it, why can they not do the same in response to a global environmental emergency? His answers embrace institutional, ideological, and interest-laden factors together with the issue of who controls the public argument.

It can be argued that all these factors have a common denominator: the fundamental flaws in liberal democracy. The market economy, now the linchpin of western culture, is fused with liberal democracy, such that each is dependent upon the other for survival. Together they have developed a liberty for the individual that has environmentally destructive consequences. The liberty to negate these consequences is constrained.

This article discusses some of the psychological aspects of this situation and introduces the idea of authoritarian action led by experts to address the ecological emergency.

The short-term fix

openDemocracy writers debate the politics of climate change:

Stephan Harrison, "Glaciers and geopolitics" (27 May 2005)

Saleemul Huq & Camilla Toulmin, "Climate change: from science and economics to human rights" (7 November 2006)

Simon Retallack, "Climate change: the global test" (10 November 2006)

Tom Burke, "Climate change: choosing the tools" (21 December 2006)

John Elkington & Geoff Lye, "Climate change's right and wrong fixes" (2 February 2007)

Dougald Hine, "Climate change: a question of democracy" (2 March 2007)

Andrew Dobson, "A politics of global warming: the social-science resource" (29 March 2007)

Oliver Tickell, "Live Earth's limits" (6 July 2007)

Andrew Dobson, "A climate of crisis: towards the eco-state" (19 September 2007)

Mike Hulme, "Climate change: from issue to magnifier" (19 October 2007)

In psychological terms, a financial emergency immediately threatens self and the understood and valued way of life. This carries more danger to self than the future and ill-understood threat of ecological crisis. Human psychological mechanisms profoundly influence the primacy of self-preservation and the need to procreate that determines our quest for goods, status, and power. Humanity's inability to think long term is related to the brain's evolutionary need to adapt to the conditions of a local environment (see EO Wilson, The Future of Life [Little, Brown, 2002]). Our ancestors had to think short term with an emotional commitment to the limited space around them and to a limited band of kinsmen. This is the Darwinian priority of short-term gain that bestowed longevity and more offspring upon a cooperative group of relatives and friends. As a result, we ignore any distant possibility not yet requiring examination.

If we imprint these responses upon the cult of liberal democracy as it operates today, it is possible to explain the illogical happenings that have brought us to current governmental responses - or indeed non-responses. An illustration close to home is the responses of the John Howard government in Australia, now facing the challenge of an election campaign - though similar responses are documented in the United States and to a lesser degree in Britain. Two recent detailed studies are used to document the permissive infiltration of government processes by the fossil-fuel industries (see Clive Hamilton, Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change [Black Inc. Agenda, 2007] and Guy Pearse, High & Dry: John Howard, climate change and the selling of Australia's future [Penguin, 2007]).

The behavioural block

The mechanisms used by industry to reinforce its interests are intensive lobbying, financial support for think-tanks and government decision-making bodies, interchange of staff between industry and government bureaucracy and the writing of cabinet papers. In its eleven years of power, the Howard government has been united with industry in believing that the threat to Australia was not from climate change but from possible actions to alleviate it that might harm industry, exports and the rule of government.

During this period, a closely woven network of individuals with the intent of denying climate change and delaying any government responses to it has been in continuous operation. The network involved many government politicians, some members of cabinet, and conservative think-tanks linked financially and ideologically to their counterparts in the US. Clearly, it is doubtful if this could have happened if the government was not ideologically receptive. Government was fervent in denial of climate change, scientists were suppressed, research was terminated and disdain was expressed for expert opinion. The total denial of access to those who could explain the problem contrasted with an open-door policy for fossil-fuel lobbyists.

The functions of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (Abare), a government resource, merit particular discussion. This organisation prepares and researches figures for government and industry yet it is supported financially by polluting industries. It prepared the model that underpinned the Howard government's greenhouse study and the polluters oversaw this process. Abare produced reports that stressed the dangers of cutting emissions.

On 16 August 2006, John Howard told parliament: "According to Abare, a 50% cut in Australian emissions by 2050 would lead to a 10% fall in GDP, a 20% fall in real wages, a carbon price equivalent to a doubling of petrol prices, and a staggering 600% rise in electricity and gas prices. They are the calculations of the Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics" (see Australia, House of Representatives, "Question without notice", Hansard, 16 August 2006).The report was embellished by John Howard. To give the impression that deep cuts in emissions would mean by 2050 an economy 10% smaller than today and with 20% lower wages, Howard's numbers excluded the words, "compared with business as usual". Despite the fact that the report was prepared to support him, he felt the need to embellish it.

These actions can be analysed in the context of conservational psychology and behavioural change (see O Hernảndez & MC Monroe, "Thinking About Behavior", in BA Day & MC Monroe, eds., Environmental Education and Communication for a Sustainable World: A Handbook for International Practitioners (Academy for Educational Development, 2000). Behaviour change is seen as a gradual process involving several stages. In the pre-contemplation stage the person or group does not know or does not consider adopting ecologically sustainable behavior, such as the acceptance and response to climate change. The contemplation stage sees the person thinking about these issues and considering adopting such behaviours. The person may then progress to preparation for action and then to the action stage.

In Australia, the Howard government has spent eleven years in the pre-contemplative phase, with its kinsmen industries in self-preservation mode and with an unsullied market ideology. In 2007 Howard still showed little acceptance of the effects of climate change. When asked what life would be like in Australia if temperatures around the world rose by 4-6 degrees Celsius, he said. "Well, it would be less comfortable for some than it is now" (see "Howard 'no idea' about climate change", The Australian, 6 February 2007). Public opinion has now forced him reluctantly into contemplation and into some action but he has employed actions that still fit within his ideological concerns. Proposals involve "aspirational" targets and clean coal that do not threaten the market ideology. This behavioural change cannot progress further because there is conflict of interest between the understanding of the science and the commitment to an unfettered market that supports political power and material existence.

The systemic flaw

The John Howard government has acted with integrity according to its own value-system. That value-system includes the righteousness of access and policy-making to those who support conservative government and free markets, and the exclusion of those experts who might endanger the system. The corruption of democracy is justified by the cause. Furthermore, the ideological kraal has become secure from contaminating thought by the politicisation of the public service which feeds government with what it wants to hear and by the interposition of politically appointed staffers.

This conflict between system and appropriate action is expressed in two statements by Tony Blair:

* "Making the shift to a sustainable lifestyle is one of the most important challenges for the 21st century. The reality of climate change brings home to us the consequence of not facing up to these challenges" (quoted in Tim Jackson, ed., The Earthscan Reader on Sustainable Consumption, Earthscan, 2006)

* "If we were to put forward a solution to climate change, something that would involve drastic cuts in economic growth or standards of living, it would not matter how justified it was, it would simply not be agreed to"

The conflict - the fusion of democracy and market - cannot survive without economic growth, and neither can the politician (see David Shearman, "Kyoto: One Tiny Step for Humanity", Online Opinion, 4 March 2005). George W Bush after seven years of denial and sabotage of climate science has reluctantly moved forward from the pre-contemplative stage but is constrained by the same paradigm: "We must lead the world to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and we must do it in a way that does not undermine economic growth or prevent nations from delivering greater prosperity for their people."

The big leap forward in behavioural change has to be an acceptance that economic growth in its present form threatens our survival. It is not a simple matter of changing to renewables which will bring an explosion in employment and continuing growth. Climate change is but one of a network of factors destroying the ecological services which support the world's burgeoning population. It is questionable whether the leaders elected through liberal democracy have the ability to understand these complex issues, and indeed the commitment to act upon them.

Plato recognised the problems that would befall democracy. The needs of the populace would not be resisted by those who sought power; power is best exerted by those (experts) who did not seek power.

Clearly expertise is needed in this complex world issue, but how do we get there in the face of "mediocracy"?. The first step is to float the issue; and indeed we find that some intellectuals are thinking this way, though cautiously - so as to avoid being labelled as revolutionary.

Václav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, says: "I don't agree with those whose reaction is to warn against restricting civil freedoms. Were the forecasts of certain climatologists to come true, our freedoms would be tantamount to those of someone hanging from a 20th-storey parapet" (see "Our Moral Footprint", New York Times, 27 September 2007).

Tim Flannery (in The Weather Makers: Our changing climate and what it means for life on earth) contrasts the freedom of humanity with the need for a more directive leadership.

The case for an authoritarianism of experts has been explored with the philosophical conclusion that continuing absolute liberty cannot be preferable to life (see David Shearman & Joseph Wayne Smith, The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, Praeger, 2007). It may well be non-western states (including China) will find ways to deliver while the west continues to display its extreme liberty with ineffectual debate and a surrender to powerful interests in its grinding democratic institutions.

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