In the long-run climate change is an existential issue for our species. In the short term, it is an existential threat for democracy. As world leaders from the United States to the European Union and India commit to ambitious carbon cuts, we must tie in climate change discussions with an urgent agenda to help democracies rise to this global challenge. Our future rides on it.
The connections between democracy and climate change are here to see. Climate change is impacting democratic governance with its effects on food security, migration, water scarcity and the financial impact of extreme weather events. At the same time, how democratic systems adapt policies to drastically reduce their carbon footprint will define future global stability. Democracies comprise over half of the emissions globally, with 15 democracies amongst the top 20 CO2 emitters.
The quality of democracy’s response to the climate crisis will also be key for its future viability as a political system. Dealing with climate change will test democracy’s capacities to confront existential issues for humankind, and hence core to its worth as a governing tool. What use is a political system that is unable to protect the survival of human beings? As has been the case with the COVID-19 pandemic, some proponents of authoritarianism –most notably China —see in the responses to the climate crisis an opportunity to prove the virtues of centralized decision-making and showcase the perceived clumsiness of democracy to deal with urgent challenges.
We must prepare democracies to deal with this crisis. First, on the narrative. Here the first step is to avoid defeatism and be clear-eyed about the attributes that democracy brings. We may be seduced by Xi Jinping’s confident pledge to make China carbon neutral by 2060, but the truth is that democracies, on average, do better in dealing with climate change and honoring international agreements on the environment. The Climate Change Performance Index 2020, which measures climate protection performance by 57 countries and the European Union, accounting for over 90% of global greenhouse gas emissions, has 9 democracies amongst the top 10 places. China is 27th.
Democratic systems can mobilize significant assets against climate change. Chief amongst them are the free circulation of information, the capacity of society to hold policymakers to account and, ultimately, the greater correctness and legitimacy of public policies. It is not exactly random that Greta Thunberg and her global movement were born in Sweden. These assets are, of course, matched by weaknesses, including the short-term bias that often afflicts democratic decision-making, the danger of policy inconsistency, and the permeability of the policy-making process to interests adverse to fighting climate change, often through the outsized role of money in politics. Identifying democracy’s strengths and shortcomings to deal with the climate crisis is crucial to guide reforms to help democracies confront complex inter-generational issues.
Second, we need to measure performance. It is unwise to isolate the performance of democratic systems from their response to such an existential issue as climate change. Even if we do not ascribe rights to the unborn, a democracy that enacts policies that deepen the climate crisis actively undermines the right to life for all people and the rights of today’s younger population to the material basis of their future wellbeing. As a matter of principle, the protection of those rights ought to be a defining criterion of democratic performance. As a matter of policy, incorporating climate change responses into the measurement of democratic performance may create incentives for democracies to tackle the climate crisis, as we do with women’s and LGBTQ rights.
Third, we need to reform institutions in ways that increase democracy’s ability to adopt climate-friendly policies. As a number of democracies mull declaring climate “states of emergencies”, their governments must show their worth versus authoritarian regimes by creating political consensus over the thorny, trillion-dollar issues of fairly distributing and compensating costs of decarbonization policies, whether it is shutting coal stations, taxing air travel or investing in train networks. Small European democracies like Sweden have shown how institutionalized dialogue between unions, employers and government agencies can enable fair and innovative policies, including those related to the environment.
It is a model that other democracies could learn from. But there is also increased interest in the promise of new practices of deliberative democracy to tackle politically sensitive, often long-term, issues in which the interests of citizens may diverge from those of political actors and interest groups. For example, the institution of a citizens’ assembly –a randomly selected group of 99 citizens—was used in Ireland in 2017 to discuss climate change policies.