Instead of moving in the right direction on climate, editor David Orr writes, the US is embroiled “in an ongoing right-wing insurrection” (p. 3). It’s not the best of circumstances for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, but not wholly foreign to the Canadian context from which I write (Dembicki, Reference Dembicki2022; Taft, Reference Taft2017), or the many countries experiencing authoritarian shifts and resistance to climate action (King, Reference King2024).
An edited collection with 16 chapters, a forward and an afterword, the authors set out to explore what sort of a democracy is needed to make it through a world that is dangerously warming, beginning from the premise that, “our fossil-fuel- and corporate-dominated democracy seems to have stalled out” (p. 3). Written largely about the United States, the premise is easy to accept; things are not much different in Canada (Gutstein, Reference Gutstein2018).
The book will be of greatest interest to an American audience, given chapters focused tightly on US politics — politics which sometimes seem bizarre to non-Americans. Still, there is relevance for other readers.
Frances Moore Lappé considers inequality, the climate crisis and democratic decline through the lens of food and corporate concentration, calling the profit-driven economy unfair and dangerous. She suggests we need to change our story of humans from “selfish, materialistic and competitive” (p. 29) to realising that we have the traits we need for democracy, including a sense of fairness, empathy and generosity. She writes that we need education that leads to action. Anti-capitalist ideas and calls to activism appear frequently, if quietly, across many chapters.
Hélène Landemore writes that we will not decarbonise without democracy; people resist decrees from above, whether it’s Chinese citizens finally forcing the end to COVID lockdowns or the Yellow Vests in France pushing back against unfair climate policy. She suggests that the economy must also be democratised, arguing that where corporations do pay attention to environmental issues, it is typically in response to pressure from employees and activists.
Daniel Lindvall writes that the current electorate claims everything for itself at the price of future generations and calls for more farsighted democracy. Global agreements, carbon pricing and incorporating climate protection in a country’s constitution help governments look beyond the short election cycle. Lindvall suggests future generations should receive proxy representation in parliaments.
Lindvall and Landemore both caution against leaving decisions to scientists, but I am not convinced that scientists are so poorly placed to consider “competing interests.” They understand the science, they don’t need to get re-elected, and they are less open to being lobbied. Imagine if we had engaged electorates that demanded politicians work within the planetary boundaries (Richardson et al., Reference Richardson, Steffen, Lucht, Bendtsen, Cornell, Donges, Drüke, Fetzer, Bala, von Bloh, Feulner, Fiedler, Gerten, Gleeson, Hofmann, Huiskamp, Kummu, Mohan, Nogués-Bravo, Petri, Porkka, Rahmstorf, Schaphoff, Thonicke, Tobian, Virkki, Wang-Erlandsson, Weber and Rockström2023) defined by science?
Climate litigation, Lindvall writes, can push decision-makers to consider the rights of future generations, but he cautions that when litigation overturns democratic decisions, it can “challenge the legitimacy of the democratic system” (p. 63). Perhaps we should welcome that. Democracies so studiously avoiding strong action on climate change desperately need strengthening.
William J. Barber III writes that for “bold action on climate” (p. 72) the path is through elections. While he rightly criticises attacks on voting rights and the distortions of money, as things currently stand, Americans have two choices and neither is remotely up to the climate challenge. In Canada, similarly, every major political party has economic growth as a priority and even a Green Party government would likely be blocked by capitalism from making meaningful greenhouse gas reductions (Camfield, Reference Camfield2023).
Holly Jean Buck argues that the Internet makes political consensus and clean energy infrastructure impossible to build, resonating with Crary (Reference Crary2022). With tech companies selling our attention and algorithms maximising hate and division, it is a bit hard to imagine how we might not be f**ed. I ask my climate change education students to leave their phone alone until noon one day as a personal change challenge; few can do it unless they sleep until noon.
In work that complements Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective’s (Reference Malm2021) explorations in White Skin, Black Fuel, Buck traces democracy’s relationship to fossil fuels and argues that our hope for energy democracy — widely distributed, small-scale, locally controlled — underestimates the need for a democratic state and large-scale publicly owned and controlled energy projects.
Some of what we need for an energy transition is being democratically resisted (e.g., new mines) but Buck cautions that authoritarianism is not the answer; it is “both symptom and cause of climate change” (p. 109). She describes a “climate-authoritarian doom loop” (p. 110) that we need to avoid. We should use the Internet “to imagine better futures and focus on shared goals” (p. 114) and a central demand of the climate movement should be for “public, collectively owned, and nonprofit platforms” (p. 115).
Frederick W. Mayer blames the failure to tackle climate change on a “global democracy crisis” (p. 117) but cautions against trying to fix democracy before acting on climate. He sees climate-related discontent engendered by the schism between citizens and rulers as potentially large enough to “catalyze a climate revolution” (p. 118) — saving democracy as we tackle climate. Mayer does not expect this to be easy. He writes: “without significantly greater pressure from society, we cannot expect our existing systems of governance either to do what needs to be done on climate change, or to reverse democratic decline” (p. 118).
Mayer notes that it is “the more democratic countries that have the most progressive climate policies” (p. 123). I expect he means countries such as Denmark, which tops the world in the Climate Change Performance Index rankings (New Climate Institute, 2023) and, of course, uses proportional representation to elect its governments. This may seem impossible to writers in the US context — none of whom mentioned it.
Also, a bit hard to imagine, Stan Cox writes about the need for degrowth, arguing for hard and decreasing caps on oil, gas and coal production, fair-share rationing of fuel and electricity and universal basic services. Florini, LaForge and Slaughter, on the other hand, write that “emissions reduction and economic growth are not mutually exclusive” (p. 162) and Buck dismisses degrowth without defining it as Hickel (Reference Hickel2020) does in Less is More — degrowing less necessary forms of production (mansions, private jets), primarily in the overdeveloped world, while ramping up green energy infrastructure. Hard to imagine or not, it’s clear where we’re heading if we don’t heed Cox’s warning to transform the economy “in order to function on far less energy” (p. 193). We agree that it is “fatally irresponsible” to bet the farm on risky green growth assumptions.
Finally, the Afterword alone was worth the price of the book. Kim Stanley Robinson points out that climate change is not like anything that has come before: “we have never before begun a mass extinction event that will wreck our civilization” (p. 240), and he does not mince words about democracy: “It has to be made real at last” (p. 241). The “capitalist oligarchs” might be delusional — planning on escaping to Mars or New Zealand — but the rest of us need to act.
Robinson reminds us that democratically elected governments have sometimes taken on authoritarian powers with support from citizens, such as during WWII, arguing that what people really want is good governance. A climate jobs guarantee, progressive taxation and a 10:1 maximum wage ratio would be part of democracy for economic justice, necessary for a political economy that would protect the climate.
Largely missing from the book were Indigenous climate action and climate emotions, both only barely mentioned.
A number of authors made the pitch that though the changes we need may seem impossible, we must try. The mechanisms for movement building to secure proposed changes were, though, only spottily covered. We do not in fact know how close we are to a social tipping point where governments will be forced to break allegiance with fossil fuel corporations. We need larger movements to move it closer, creating room for the democratic changes and climate policy that could move us toward safety.
If you are looking for a first book to read about climate change, Greta Thunberg (Reference Thunberg2022) makes the case in her edited book that there can be no democracy or adequate climate action without accurate information about the climate crisis. If you are a climate change educator who has already read many books about climate change, you should find interesting arguments about democracy in a warming world in a number of chapters here.
Author Biography
Paul Berger is an on-the-street climate change activist with CUSP — Citizens United for a Sustainable Planet on traditional Anishinaabe Territory under the Robinson Superior Treaty of 1850. He is an Associate Professor at Lakehead University, teaching climate change education and wild pedagogies. He came to activism and climate teaching through reading rather than through Environmental Studies or Environmental Education.
Open access
