Why Climate Action Demands Democracy

Looming “catastrophe” must not be used to justify authoritarianism. Solutions premised on unchecked power would bring their own risks of catastrophe.

By Stephen Gardiner

December 2024

Imagine that human life and civilization on this planet were at risk from a serious threat caused by human activities, but preventable by changes in those activities. Suppose that existing social and political systems allowed the threat to emerge, but have proven incapable of adequately responding to it within a reasonable timeframe. Presumably, the fact of global failure would count as a criticism of both those systems and the philosophies that underwrite them. Under some circumstances, the criticism would be fatal. We might say that both the systems and their underlying philosophies face a global test that sets a basic constraint on their acceptability.

That global test is currently live. A prominent example is rapid global environmental change, which poses a fundamental threat to particular societies, to humanity as a whole, and to nonhuman populations. One dimension is the climate crisis; another is the dramatic human encroachment on nonhuman life (the so-called biodiversity crisis). According to mainstream science, both have ramped up in recent decades and now risk spiraling out of control. Consequently, there are realistic threats of “hard-landing” scenarios (dramatic global changes with severe and hard-to-address negative impacts) or even “crash-landing” scenarios (spectacular global changes with catastrophic effects that cannot be addressed). Notably, these scenarios include prospects of social and ecological collapses at levels ranging from the local to the continental and beyond. Thus, when it comes to global environmental change, it seems clear that existing social and political systems are currently failing the global test and that they have been doing so for decades.

Sadly, mainstream public discussion is in the grip of a deep institutional denialism: a refusal to accept reality about the inadequacy of existing institutions in the face of global environmental threats, and an excessive skepticism about possible alternatives. Denialism is not the same as reasonable disagreement. It is instead a refusal to accept reality. The hallmarks are imperviousness to evidence or an insistence on unreasonably demanding standards for what constitutes acceptable evidence. In my view, institutional denialism is at least as dangerous as scientific denialism about the basic facts of climate change. Arguably, it is more so.

Is Democracy to Blame?

Since human systems are failing, it has become popular in academic, policy, and activist circles to name those systems in ideological ways and then condemn the ideology in question. In the United States, for example, denunciations of “capitalism” and now “democracy” are becoming increasingly common and, in some circles, routine.

Unfortunately, one familiar argument is superficial and fallacious. Suppose one simply defines the current system as “democratic” or “capitalist.” Then it seems easy to infer that, since that system is failing by allowing the ecological crisis to intensify, democracy and capitalism must be to blame. Yet this is a shallow form of reasoning. The primary meanings of democracy and capitalism (as well as liberalism, conservativism, socialism, and so on) are prior to and independent of current systems. Thus, the “argument by definition” tells us little. While clearly something is not working, we cannot conclude that a particular political philosophy — such as democracy — is failing unless we learn more about the link between it and the systems being condemned.

This simple point should lead us to ask three basic questions about the relationship between democracy and global environmental change. The first is: Are the failing systems actually democratic in the appropriate sense? Importantly, there are significant reasons to doubt that they are. One reason is that the climate problem is genuinely global, while democracy is not. This point is central, but frequently neglected.

Another reason for doubt is that multiple forces are implicated in global environmental change, and most are not remotely democratic. In the case of climate change, for example, large state-owned energy companies produce fossil fuels on a massive scale, and many sovereign-wealth funds promote carbon-intensive consumption at home and abroad. Since few of the countries involved are democracies, whatever explains their behavior, it is not democracy.

Moreover, what counts as a democracy is contested — yet another reason to doubt that democracy is the key problem. Even countries customarily referred to as democracies are often not classified as such by social scientists. For example, some suggest that the United States is better seen as an elite-dominated polity (a plutocracy or oligarchy) than as a democracy. Thus if U.S. climate policy is failing, democracy might not be to blame.

The second question about the relationship between democracy and global environmental change asks: Even if certain so-called democracies are failing to address the climate crisis, is their failure due to their democratic features or to other factors? Again, the answer is contested. For instance, many worry that conventional democratic institutions are currently being inhibited and their values undermined by hostile forces. Notably, this may not be exogenous to the ecological crisis. Some complain that fossil-fuel interests that wish to curtail climate action are actively subverting democratic norms in order to achieve those ends.

The third question asks: Would rejecting democracy in favor of authoritarianism help or hinder the cause of beneficial change? It is far from clear that “help” is the answer. For one thing, autocratic systems are also failing the global test when it comes to the environmental crisis. Thus pushing autocracy as an alternative to democracy seems myopic and misguided. For another, there is likely to be a mismatch of regime priorities with climate priorities. Some of the central values that need protecting amid the ecological crisis include basic human dignity, individual well-being, the special constitutive roles played by diverse cultures and environments in grounding meaningful lives, and respect for the nonhuman world.

In theory, regimes of various forms might respect those values. In practice, however, they resonate most strongly with democratic ideals, and are therefore likely to be best promoted by true, robust democracies. Arguably, this implies that what is needed is not less democracy, but more. Perhaps only a global system that is better at embodying broadly democratic values and implementing policies that reflect them can pass the global test.

Intergenerational Tyranny

How then might we make progress? If we are looking to political regimes for solutions, we should first ask how best to understand the problems to be solved. For 25 years, I have been arguing that the global environmental tragedy is fundamentally a “perfect moral storm” that involves the convergence of several independently powerful challenges that confront us as ethical agents. Among other things, this convergence encourages “moral corruption”: distortions in how our problems are discussed, especially through warped framings, misleading arguments, and shadow solutions that reflect the narrow priorities of the few while leaving deeper issues unresolved. Climate change is a paradigm example.

The “perfect moral storm” analysis is multidimensional. It highlights challenges that face us at the global, intergenerational, ecological, and theoretical levels. Among the key problems this analysis identifies are skewed vulnerabilities (for example, those least at fault are most at risk); background injustices (such as global poverty, inequality, gender discrimination, racism, the legacies of feudalism and colonialism, and so on); intergenerational injustice; and the tyranny of humanity (over the nonhuman). All these ethical dimensions deserve attention.

Here I highlight the threat of intergenerational tyranny, because it is too little discussed and because those upon whom most intergenerational burdens fall (the young and the not-yet-born) have little or no say in current decisionmaking. In my view, the core intergenerational threat posed by climate change is the “tyranny of the contemporary,” a collective-action problem that plays out across generations. In a paradigm case, as each generation rises to power, it exploits its temporal position in order to reap modest benefits for itself at the expense of future generations. Over successive generations, future harms pile up till they become catastrophic. In the climate case, rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere support contemporary comforts yet deliver dire trouble to future generations.

Intergenerational tyranny is a basic standing threat to human societies. Yet often the threat is hidden by rival framings of the climate problem, such as the prisoners’ dilemma or a “tragedy of the commons” analysis. In the hands of many, this implicitly rules out intergenerational tyranny through the assumption that current governments can be relied upon to be effective stewards for the future. Arguably, this is a form of intergenerational moral corruption. It assumes away a central domain of the problem and so distorts our understanding of what is at stake.

Unfortunately, there are numerous signs that intergenerational tyranny and moral corruption exert a powerful influence on international climate policy. Consider the Kyoto, Copenhagen, and Paris climate accords, or the recent UN climate meeting in Baku. Despite some bold rhetoric, annual global emissions are higher than ever, and each of these efforts stands accused of “kicking the can down the road.” Tellingly, they all have flaws that encourage “passing the buck” to future generations — including distant targets (“net zero by 2050”), vague accounting methods, and weak enforcement. At best, the international effort seems to embody a moderated wait-and-see approach on the part of older generations of the more affluent; at worst, it perpetuates dangerous illusions of progress that serve mainly to prolong and facilitate “business as usual” even as the catastrophic risks gather just over the horizon.

One question that the renewed interest in authoritarianism sparks is whether, rather than enabling a green, sustainable transition, authoritarian approaches would prove to be merely shadow solutions that ultimately further encourage intergenerational tyranny. Perhaps in reality a turn toward authoritarianism would consolidate the power of older generations of the affluent, encourage unholy alliances against the future, and lead in a direction that is not greener, but browner. Why not? Who are the most likely authoritarians? How would they emerge?

A Global Constitutional Convention?

If intergenerational tyranny is one root of our institutional problem, what kinds of solutions should we pursue? Partly, the answer depends on the drivers of intergenerational tyranny. These are likely to be multiple. The most obvious is ruthlessness. A generation may be most strongly motivated by its own narrow interests, or else merely by whatever happens during its own time, and indifferent to anything else. A second driver is shallowness. A generation may be consumed by a very self-centered and superficial sense of what matters while remaining oblivious to wider values. A third possibility is cowardice. A generation may grasp what is at stake for the future but be too afraid of change to try meaningful reform. A fourth possible driver is the existence of a governance gap: A given generation may have strong intergenerational concerns, but lack effective institutions that can make those concerns count in the real world. For instance, perhaps the society has powerful mechanisms (such as markets and short election cycles) for turning short-term and narrowly economic motivations into action, but no structures to do the same for wider concerns about the future.

I believe that all four drivers (and more) contribute something to our current predicament. My focus, however, is on the governance gap. There are significant reasons to believe that substantial intergenerational concern is present in most societies, but lacks sufficient institutional purchase to make it effective. Consequently, intergenerational concern tends to be overwhelmed and crowded out by other forces that do have institutional channels to make their influence count.

To correct this problem, two things are needed. First, fresh intergenerational institutions must fill the governance gap. Second, these intergenerational institutions must be situated within the more general institutional landscape in ways that allow them to be effective in their own domain but also keep them respectful of the legitimate spheres of other well-justified institutions.

To address these tasks, I propose a global constitutional convention (GCC) focused on future generations. This supranational deliberative body would be charged with confronting the governance gap. It would solicit, compare, and assess proposals for structural solutions. It would ground its assessment in consideration of appropriate intergenerational norms and then make recommendations about which institutions should be implemented, at what levels, and how. The best way to build such a forum is itself an important question in political philosophy. To facilitate that discussion, I have proposed an initial set of guidelines as a starting point (and encouraged others to reflect on and improve them).

The bare proposal for a GCC is not by itself a democratic initiative. Nevertheless, it is both compatible with democratic ideals and in some sense expresses a global democratic ethos.
First, the GCC would seek to correct for a major democratic deficit. To remain legitimate over time, societies must display intergenerational concern, but under current institutions such concern lacks an effective institutional voice and is easily overwhelmed by other considerations. This suggests that the will of the people is being thwarted as lesser interests usurp power.

Second, in aiming to protect the future against intergenerational tyranny, the GCC would take seriously the equal moral worth of all generations and their members. It would aspire to more fully embed and articulate robust intergenerational norms, and to make those norms more effective in practice. Notably, many of these norms are already present or assumed in foundational agreements and traditions within most societies and at the international level. For example, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has “protecting current and future generations” as its primary aim. One task of the GCC would be to prevent mere lip service to such ideals by figuring out how to defend them more vigorously.

I close with a contrast. The GCC is a response to the global test. Its aim would be to ensure the long-term future of humanity while also acknowledging that additional institutions are needed to protect against other, more familiar standing threats. The GCC belongs, therefore, to a wider vision. Authoritarian proposals, by contrast, appear more myopic. Arguably, they would prove particularly vulnerable to national parochialism, short-termism, intergenerational tyranny, and moral corruption. Even if they were initially motivated through appeals for decisive “green” action, it is unlikely that they would end up that way.

Of course, advocates of authoritarian approaches often try to justify their proposals by invoking concepts such as “emergency,” “catastrophe,” and “the lesser evil.” Yet such justifications set the bar very low. After all, almost anything is better than complete catastrophe, but that does not make just “anything” desirable. Solutions that are premised on huge concentrations of unchecked power will bring their own risks of catastrophe, ecological and otherwise. We should not bury our heads in the sand, but instead set our sights higher. Plausibly, what is needed is greater fidelity to democratic ideals, not a repudiation of those ideals.

Stephen Gardiner is professor of philosophy and Ben Rabinowitz Endowed Professor of Human Dimensions of the Environment at the University of Washington.

Copyright © 2024 National Endowment for Democracy

Image credit: Jörg Farys/Fridays for Future via Flickr