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

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.

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