4 Can We Sustain Democracy and the Planet Too?

For decades now, climate scientists have been building an increasingly complete and powerful case for the conclusion that the earth's mean temperature is increasing, and a principal cause is the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.1 That conclusion serves, in turn, as the starting point for analyses—less firmly grounded to be sure—that reveal many types of potentially problematic consequences, including some that are truly devastating. Indeed, if business as usual proceeds long enough, catastrophe is bound to occur. Yet despite repeated warnings, citizens of democratic regimes around the world have not been clamoring for policies that would limit industrial emissions or check the warming trend. Even before 2016 and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, there were signs of trouble. Pressure on politicians to consider bold initiatives aimed at tackling the problem of global warming abated, often because of other urgent issues (for example, the migration crisis that has frequently dominated European politics). Even in nations that once contained strong movements expressing public concern about climate change, the voices today are more muted than they were. For a brief hopeful moment, during the last days of Barack Obama's presidency, it seemed as though the United States, long a laggard among the affluent nations, was prepared to play a leadership role. Hopes were dashed by Trump's accusations that climate change is a concept “created by and for the Chinese in order to make American business noncompetitive,” and the subsequent actions to which this ludicrous verdict has led him. The Trump administration appears gleefully bent on accelerating the transition to climatic disaster.