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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Global climate change poses an unprecedented challenge for governments across the world. Small wonder that many experts question whether democracies have the ability to cope with the causes and long-term consequences of a changing climate. Some even argue that authoritarian regimes are better equipped to make the tough choices required to tackle the climate crisis. In this incisive book, Daniel Fiorino challenges the assumptions and evidence offered by sceptics of democracy and its capacity to handle climate change. Democracies, he explains, typically enjoy higher levels of environmental performance and produce greater innovation in technology, policy, and climate governance than autocracies. Rather than less democracy, Fiorino calls for a more accountable and responsive politics that will provide democratically-elected governments with the enhanced capacity for collective action on climate and other environmental issues.
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Seitenzahl: 140
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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Table of Contents
Series Title
Title page
Copyright page
Tables
Preface
Notes
Acknowledgments
1: The Challenge to Governance
What is climate change?
The impacts of climate change
International agreements on climate change
Mitigation and adaptation
Defining democracy
The challenge to governance
Is the critique of democracy all that important?
Notes
2: Do Authoritarian Regimes Do Better?
Democracy critics from the 1970s
More recent critics
A response to the critics
Why democracies
should
be better at handling climate change
Why democracies may not be better at handling climate change
The evidence on democracy and climate change
Notes
3: Why Democracies Differ
Structural factors
The number of veto points
Legislative representation and electoral rules
Federal compared to more unitary systems
Patterns of governance
Economic composition
Economic inequality
The accumulation or consolidation of democracy
Political factors
Issue framing
Governing philosophy
Lessons on democracy and climate change
Notes
4: How Democracies Can Handle Climate Change
What will it take?
Project Drawdown
Democracies can do this
Other strengths of democracy
A dynamic and innovative private sector
Sub-national leadership and innovation
Active global engagement
The ability to frame choices in positive terms
What about adaptation?
Do the democracy critics understand politics?
Do the democracy critics matter?
Political regimes and climate change
The path forward
Notes
Further Reading
Notes
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Start Reading
Tables
Chapter 1
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Series Title
Democratic Futures series
Stephen Coleman,
Can the Internet Strengthen Democracy?
Drude Dahlerup,
Has Democracy Failed Women?
Donald F. Kettl,
Can Governments Earn Our Trust?
Alasdair Roberts,
Can Government Do Anything Right?
Copyright page
Copyright © Daniel J. Fiorino 2018
The right of Daniel J. Fiorino to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
101 Station Landing
Suite 300
Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2395-5
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2396-2(pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset in 11 on 15pt Sabon
by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives PLC
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Tables
1.1 Main Greenhouse Gases and their Global Warming Potential (GWP)
1.2 Characteristics of Regime Types with Examples
1.3 Population and Emissions by Regime Type in EIU Democracy Index
2.1 Summary of the Bases for the Two Ideal Regime Types
3.1 Structural and Political Factors Explaining Variations Among Democracies
Preface
The end of 2017 brought reports that the extent and impacts of climate change could be far worse than previous scenarios had suggested. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States concluded there is a one in twenty chance that the world could experience “catastrophic” warming between 2050 and 2100, enough to pose an “existential” threat to global populations.1
The next month, the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Atmosphere Watch determined that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases had reached their highest level in 800,000 years. Rapidly increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, the WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin found, “have the potential to initiate unpredictable changes in the climate system … leading to severe ecological and economic disruptions.”2 A week later, an updated National Climate Assessment in the United States issued what the Washington Post termed a “dire” report that warns of “a worst-case scenario where seas would rise as high as eight feet by the year 2100, and details climate-related damage across the United States that is already unfolding as a result of an average global temperature increase of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900.”3
All of this came on top of years of accumulating evidence on the severity of the threats posed by climate change and its ecological, health, economic, social, and political impacts. These threats, most of them concentrated on the poorest and most vulnerable of the world’s population, have created doubts about the ability of governments around the world to cope with the causes and impacts of climate change. Democracies in particular have been the object of skepticism. Confronting the existential and catastrophic threat of a changing climate is, many critics argue, akin to fighting a major war. Whether democracy is able to effectively take up the challenge of mitigating and adapting to climate change will determine what kind of planet we pass on to future generations.
Notes
1
Yangyang Xu and Veerabhadran Ramanathan, “Well Below 2°C: Mitigation Strategies for Avoiding Dangerous to Catastrophic Climate Changes,”
PNAS
114.39 (September 26, 2017), pp. 10315–23, at
http://www.pnas.org/content/114/39/10315.full.pdf
.
2
WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, 13 (October 30, 2017), at
https://ane4bf-datap1.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/wmocms/s3fs-public/ckeditor/files/GHG_Bulletin_13_EN_final_1_1.pdf?LGJNmHpwKkEG2Qw4mEQjdm6bWxgWAJHa
.
3
Chris Mooney, Juliet Eilperin, and Brady Dennis, “Trump Administration Releases Report Finding ‘No Convincing Alternative Explanation’ for Climate Change,”
Washington Post
, November 3, 2017, at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/11/03/trump-administration-releases-report-finds-no-convincing-alternative-explanation-for-climate-change/?utm_term=.ab40af900b50
.
Acknowledgments
This book considers the interrelationships and interdependencies between two of the big issues of our time. One is climate change, often described as the greatest governance challenge of this century. The other is the quality and durability of democracy, the benefits of which are substantial but whose capacities for handling climate mitigation and adaptation have been doubted.
Thanks first go to Louise Knight at Polity Press, who encouraged me to explore this topic and offered support and guidance throughout the process. Thanks also to Nekane Tanaka Galdos at Polity for help at many points along the way and to Tim Clark for his careful copy-editing.
I also want to acknowledge the reviewers for Polity, who were thorough, thoughtful, and offered valuable advice. Special thanks for taking the time to review the manuscript and offer many valuable suggestions go to Jonathan Boston of Victoria University in New Zealand and to Robert Durant and Paul Bledsoe of American University in the United States. Thanks also to American University students Mikayla Pellerin and David Peters for their research assistance.
I am indebted to my wife Beth Ann for her encouragement and support, and to Matthew and Jacob, whose interest and stake in the future of both the climate and democracy are compelling.
1The Challenge to Governance
Can democracy handle climate change? Some experts think not. According to the distinguished scientist and founder of the Gaia theory, James Lovelock, “Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”1 The problem with democracies, so the argument goes, is that they are crippled by inertia, dominated by vested interests, and incapable of responding to existential risks such as climate change.
For Lovelock and other skeptics, democracies cannot make the hard choices needed to avoid the worst impacts of a changing climate for the rest of this century and beyond. They rely too much on the consent of a public that puts short-term gratification over long-term well-being. Democracies must respect individual rights and follow procedures that are unlikely to deliver the actions required within the necessary time frame. Voters lack the scientific knowledge needed to grasp the causes of climate change and its multiple threats to humans and the planet. Democracies are too slow, materialistic, and sclerotic to meet the complex challenges involved.
In contrast, the skeptics argue, authoritarian regimes are better able to impose solutions from the top down, no matter how unpleasant they may be in the short term. They can overcome opposition from powerful interests in fossil fuels, agriculture, land development, and elsewhere in order to enforce reductions in emissions and changes in economic and social systems. Unlike democratic regimes, they are free to implement the proposals of experts who grasp the complexities of climate science, and can override popular desires for ever-increasing consumption and immediate material gratification to achieve what is best for citizens and the planet in the long run.
This skepticism is reflected in public views in many parts of the world, even in the more established and successful democracies. Economic uncertainty, rising economic inequality, mass immigration, and changes resulting from globalization have led many citizens to doubt the value of democracy. Drawing upon data from the World Values Survey, Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk highlight this broad dissatisfaction with democratic institutions and values. In France, for example, two-fifths of respondents in 2016 thought the country should be run by an authoritarian government, while two-thirds thought authority for “unpopular but necessary reforms” should be handed over to “unelected experts.” Likewise, in the United States, the proportion supporting military rule rose from one in sixteen in 1995 to one in six in 2016. There is a generational aspect to these findings: 72 percent of Americans born before World War II say that living in a democracy is “essential”; for post-1980 millennials the comparable response is 30 percent.2 Similar trends are apparent in other countries.
The skeptics’ case has certainly gained currency given recent events in the United States and China, the two largest economies, and greenhouse gas emitters, in the world. Yet it is authoritarian China, not the democratic United States, that is often perceived to be moving to address climate change. It is on a path to stabilizing emissions ahead of the schedule it committed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, and is making major investments in renewable energy technologies – twice the US levels in 2016.
In contrast, although US emissions fell some 10 percent between 2005 and 2014, and several climate mitigation initiatives were introduced under President Barack Obama, this course was rapidly reversed at the national level following the election of Donald Trump. President Trump announced his intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement; to reverse regulations designed to reduce emissions, including the critically important Clean Power Plan; to drastically cut renewable energy and efficiency funding; and to undo strict vehicle fuel economy standards.3
This chapter introduces the problem of climate change and the challenges it poses to governance. As Ross Garnaut wrote in a report for the Australian government in 2011: “Climate change is like no other environmental problem that humanity has ever faced … the failure of our generation [to address it] would lead to consequences that would haunt humanity to the end of time.”4
What is climate change?
One reason given for doubting democracy’s ability to address the problem adequately is that global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and manage the other causes of climate change have been, to this point, insufficient to avoid many of its worst impacts. Based on the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific bodies, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases would have to level off at some 450–550 parts per million by 2050.5 Yet, far from meeting this target, the world is on a path of increasing emissions and land-use changes that will only add to the problem.6
The United Nations defines the issue as “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate vulnerability observed over comparable time periods.”7 The key here is the link to human activity and its role in contributing to abnormal variations that have profound effects. The most recent report of the US Global Change Research Program, for example, concluded “that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”8
For our purposes, climate change refers to the increase in global average temperatures that has occurred over roughly the past half-century and to the ecological effects of this increase. The primary cause is the growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, related mostly but not entirely to fossil fuel combustion. The main gases involved are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases. In its 2014 assessment, the IPCC reported that in 2010 carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use and industrial processes accounted for some 65 percent of total greenhouse gases, followed by carbon dioxide from changes in forestry and land use (11 percent), methane (at 16 percent), nitrous oxide (just over 6 percent), and fluorinated gases (2 percent). The pace of emissions has grown in recent decades: one-half of human-caused emissions since 1750 occurred in the last forty years.9 These gases also have different effects in their warming potential. Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years, while others are shorter-lived but have larger warming effects. Table 1.1 describes the gases and their respective warming potential.
Table 1.1: Main Greenhouse Gases and their Global Warming Potential (GWP)
Gas
Main sources
Percentage of global emissions
GWP
Carbon dioxide
Fossil fuels & industrial processes
Forestry & land use
65 percent
11 percent
1.0 (= the standard for stating the effects of other gases in terms of CO2 equivalents)
Methane
Agricultural activity
Waste management (e.g. landfills)
Biomass burning
16 percent
28–32 times that of CO2 over a 100-year period
Nitrous oxide
Agriculture (e.g. fertilizer)
Fossil fuels
6 percent
265–98 times that of CO2 over 100-year period
Fluorinated gases
Refrigeration
Industrial/consumer uses
2 percent
Thousands to tens of thousands of times that of CO2 but over short time periods
Source: US Environmental Protection Agency (IPCC emissions data from 2010)10
Until just a few decades ago, most emissions came from the developed world: the United States, Europe, Japan, and so on. More recently, rapid economic growth has led to higher emissions from China, India and other parts of Asia, Latin America,
