Governing Climate Change Democratically

Abstract

The climate crisis is a challenge for democratic theory. Democracies by their nature are at their best when addressing problems which can be resolved by a) motivating the relevant community with reference to their shared interests and then b) skilfully coordinating their actions in a way that is – at least partly due to its democratic embeddedness – perceived as both efficient and fair enough, to c) render the policies in question into success stories for the relevant political agents securing their re-election. Sadly, none of the key aspects of the climate crisis fit this bill. On the contrary, while all of humanity and thus all of the community share an interest to keep the climate crisis from escalating the force of this motivation varies greatly among (and within) communities as to those who are better or worse prepared for the fallout and those who are standing to lose more or less due to the necessary and drastic changes to the current ways of doing things. Furthermore, the effects of the policies that our own democratically elected governments can put in place are limited by the deep global entanglements of both the origins of, and the solutions to the problem. Any benefits of local efforts and sacrifices are likely to remain abstract, at best consisting in bad things not happening for some time in the future. Democracy is thus not able to show its best in this context. To make matters worse, the climate crisis is exactly the kind of problem where the challenges and problems of democratic theory are most apparent. Short-termism and parochialism are known concerns for democratic theory and clearly an issue here. Furthermore, real-world democratic institutions are vulnerable to the effects of lobbying and misinformation and climate change is area which lends itself particularly well to such strategies. Gas, oil, and coal exporting countries, fossil fuel companies, and other (global) businesses benefitting from the established fossil economy have considerable power to outmanoeuvre any country’s democratic attempts to address climate crises and thus to delay effective climate action. These actions do not only undermine effective climate action but also democratic decision-making as well as people’s trust and confidence in democratic approaches to crisis. This panel thus aims to bring together political theorists working on climate justice and democratic theory to discuss challenges and ideas in this sphere.

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