Source: BBC Radio 4: Analysis
URL: N/A
Date: 24/05/2010
Event: Justin Rowlatt presents Analysis: Doomed by Democracy?
Credit: BBC Radio 4
People:
Justin Rowlatt: Climate change is a divisive issue. I believe that it is a real threat and needs to be tackled. I know many people disagree. But whatever you believe you should be concerned about how our society responds to the issue because there is a growing view that mitigating climate change means we have to change our view of democracy. Here's one environmentalist.
Halina Ward: We don't have to be driven by what 50% plus 1 of the population wants to say that we represent a majority view.
Justin Rowlatt: And this is Gordon Brown's former special advisor on climate change.
Michael Jacobs: I don't think it's right to call something anti-democratic if it has the consent of the public even if you couldn't say that they were actively in favour of it.
Justin Rowlatt: Many environmentalists were dismayed by the failure to agree a comprehensive plan for emissions reductions at the international climate conference in Copenhagen in December. They are worried by the upsurge in scepticism about the underlying science of global warming. If people don't believe there is a problem how can democratic societies do anything about it? One of the most striking
responses to this mood of pessimism has been from the veteran scientist and thinker James Lovelock, the man who developed the Gaia theory of the Earth as a self-regulating organism. He has long been sceptical that people are willing to make the reductions in carbon dioxide emissions that are necessary.
James Lovelock: Most people who put the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere are ordinary working people driving to work in their old bangers – not very efficient cars – they can't go and sell them tomorrow and buy a hybrid or something. They're just obliged to go on doing what they've been doing and they're going to have to do it for a very long time if they're to stay at work and carry on life as usual. And in the winter, we have to keep warm – we've got to burn fuel to do it. We can't just expect people to suddenly become vividly green and stop all carbon emissions – it won't happen.
Justin Rowlatt: Now he's suggested a radical and controversial solution. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper he compares the challenge of climate change with that of war. “I have a feeling”, he said, “that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessar to put democracy on hold for a while.” That might sound extreme but he is not a lone voice. Mayer Hillman is a lifelong environmentalist and Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute.
Mayer Hillman: The planet has a finite capacity to absorb the further burning of fossil fuels and still leave a safe climate for the future, and
there's every indication that we - and I mean the public in this country and elsewhere - are not prepared to make the changes necessary to
achieve that. On the other hand democracy requires that those changes cannot be imposed on the public if they are unwilling to accept the
implications of that, which is living within the planet's capacity to absorb further greenhouse gas emissions.
Justin Rowlatt: So what are you saying - we suspend democracy?
Mayer Hillman: I think in the same way that I understand James Lovelock has suggested that, I fear I have to share his view on that. There's no way that the public are going to willingly say “I will forego flying”. The fact is that we've got to live on such a low use of fossil fuels for
our daily activities. Therefore it's got to be required of them and if they don't go along with it, then we are - I fear - heading for absolute
disaster. We are on a trajectory towards rendering the planet steadily uninhabitable.
Justin Rowlatt: Some people would say, Mayer, that you sound like an eco fascist.
Mayer Hillman: Well I have had that term applied to me. I don't mind these sticks and stones. I think it's irrelevant how I sound. I'm just trying to talk commonsense.
Justin Rowlatt: Establishing a kind authoritarian regime to impose restrictions on people's lifestyle – does sound like fascism doesn't it?
Mayer Hillman: Well it's interesting you should use that noun because I've often observed that in 1939 had there been a referendum as to whether we go to war with Nazi Germany – the majority would have said ‘No way' we had a horrific first war – we're not going to go through that again – there are times in history when democracy has to be set aside because of our wider obligation.
Justin Rowlatt: Mayer Hillman says he is talking common sense but to many ears his suggestion that democracy may have to be sacrificed in the face of climate change sounds like a sinister threat to our fundamental freedoms. Yet many environmentalists, while not necessarily agreeing with Hillman and Lovelock, believe we do need to recognise the challenge tackling climate change presents to democratic
institutions. Halina Ward runs the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, a charity which was set up to grapple with
the issue of how societies can be both democratic and environmentally responsible.
Halina Ward: There are some environmentalists in particular who I think privately but not publicly, in the way James Lovelock did, feel that
democracy is hampering progress. But those tend to be very privately expressed thoughts along the lines of China's easier to deal with the
intergovernmental arena perhaps because it's not a democracy. Thank goodness for that. And there's another group of activist civil society
groups who I think see that democracy presents a huge challenge, but they absolutely buy into the idea that it is absolutely the best system
that we've got and we have to find ways of working with it.
Justin Rowlatt: So what is it about climate change that makes it such an intractable problem for democratic societies? Well, first off there is the sheer scale of the challenge. Mark Lynas is an environmentalist who has become increasingly pragmatic in his approach to tackling climate change. He was once a vigorous opponent of nuclear power, now he's a wholehearted advocate. Lynas is worried that unless the
environmental movement can offer solutions acceptable to the mainstream we will never respond adequately to the challenge of global
warming.
Mark Lynas: Well humanity has built the entirety of industrial civilization on carbon based power by and large. I mean there's some exception to that like hydro electricity and nuclear and so on, but more or less it's been about people digging up coal and more latterly oil and gas from under the earth's surface - burning it in various different ways to drive machines - and that's what's given us what we consider to be modern civilization. So it's not a very easy, simple technical substitute like solving the ozone layer problem was. We're talking about the entire energy structure of modern civilization. So it's a huge, huge transition that we have to make and that's why it can't be done quickly and it can't be done easily and it probably can't be done cheaply.
Justin Rowlatt: Now, decarbonising the world economy is possible - in theory. We could replace fossil fuels with low carbon technologies like wind, solar and nuclear power but it will be very expensive and would require a transformation in the way we live our lives. Flying, for
example, would become much less common. So the question for democratic societies is whether the electorate will ever vote for politicians who demand they make sacrifices today to avoid a potential future disaster. Which raises another reason why climate change is so
intractable: its effects, says Mark Lynas, cannot be felt here and now.
Michael Jacobs: Climate change doesn't observe the normal cause and effect rules in the sense that the emissions from your car tailpipe melting an Alaskan glacier in thirty, forty years is not immediately obvious to the casual observer. So the fact that the causes and the effects of climate change are displaced both in space and time - so it's happening at a later date and it's happening somewhere else - mean that we simply can't see it very obviously. And that means we need to look at science to help us understand this and that's something which is very easy to camouflage and very easy to get involved in all sorts of complicated debates about uncertainties and this and that, which is essentially what's happened.
Justin Rowlatt: What is required is that politicians and the electorate take a long-term view of the problem. But long-term planning is not
something that democratic societies tend to be good at. Terry Tamminen has been an environmental advisor to both Barack Obama
and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Terry Tamminen: They like to talk about what we're doing for our kids, but then the reality is I think certainly most politicians do things in very short-term interests and corporations do, I think. You know if you study business today, it's really all about protecting the share price, about quarterly profits and quarterly statements and very short-term interests. And it's great for our politicians to talk about looking at future
generations and I think they do care - a lot of politicians have kids, for example, and grandkids - but it's not the way that we're currently
measured and the way we're currently focusing our resources.
Justin Rowlatt: So climate change requires a huge transformation of our economies, it demands long-term planning yet is based on contestable and uncertain science. It sounds like a recipe for inaction. But progress is being made, says Mark Lynas. Indeed, you only need to look at the wild places of Britain to see that – though it may be in the face of opposition from the electorate rather than with its blessing.
Michael Jacobs: We're going to have to build more large-scale infrastructure to replace the infrastructure which is going out of date and to solve the problem of carbon emissions. And that's going to mean dozens of new nuclear power stations, it's going to mean very large amounts of on and offshore wind, and it's going to mean bio-fuels plantations and so on and so forth. So it's going to some extent transform the visual landscape of this country, and I think that's a very difficult thing for people to accept because we're so used to things being as they are. And the planning system is being reformed by the government in fact to allow these things to take place. So I think to some extent that does suspend democracy because the planning system at the moment is too democratic in that a well-organised local campaign can stop a much needed large-scale investment.
Justin Rowlatt: In the case of a wind turbine the freedom of local people to enjoy uninterrupted views is overridden on the basis of an appeal to the common good. But climate change policy on a national level can compromise democracy much further. Indeed, the over-riding of democratic process may not be an abstract threat from green visionaries, it may already be happening. Until a few weeks ago Michael Jacobs was at the heart of government. He was Gordon Brown's special advisor on climate change. He says the legislation on climate change that has already been passed is much more comprehensive and radical than most people realise.
Michael Jacobs: The Climate Change Act puts into law targets for the emissions of greenhouse gases from the United Kingdom for 2020 and
for 2050, and it says effectively that these emissions will be capped. It doesn't matter what's happening in the rest of the economy. We will
achieve this level of emissions and no more. We set a number of targets in government - for example for child poverty - but none of them became overriding legal requirements on government in the way that the Climate Change Act sets overriding legal requirements for governments to cap the total amount of emissions. That means that this is a very significant economic intervention and it's one that all the
major political parties are signed up to.
Justin Rowlatt: Do you think the public realises how radical the climate change legislation is here in Britain?
Michael Jacobs: I suspect the public doesn't realise how radical this legislation is. The public is willing to take some action against climate
change, we know that they're concerned about this, and so far there has been no dissent from the relatively small costs that have been imposed on the public through higher energy bills in particular. But this is much more radical than that because it goes very deep. These cuts are going to have to be very deep and they go long-term. And we are now going to see changes occurring over time which do impact very significantly on people and I'm not sure the public fully understands that yet.
Justin Rowlatt: Well hold on, isn't this a bit anti-democratic? You've got a consensus among the three major parties. The public effectively
haven't chosen this legislation, have they?
Michael Jacobs: I don't think it's right to call something anti-democratic if it has the consent of the public, even if you couldn't say that they were actively in favour of it.
Justin Rowlatt: Of course no parliament has the power to bind its successors – any law can be repealed. Yet the idea that there are some
issues on which the public never gets to express its opinion is not new. Halina Ward believes the issue of climate change is one of those special cases where public opinion should not necessarily hold sway.
Halina Ward: We don't have to be driven by what 50% plus 1 of the population wants to say that we represent a majority view. I almost
wonder whether climate change is such a big issue that it's almost like capital punishment. We don't get given the opportunity to vote in the
referendum on capital punishment in this country because we buy into a social consensus if you like that we don't run with the majority on that view.
Justin Rowlatt: You say “we”. It's not we, the electorate, is it? It's the politicians who decide what issues are kind of beyond the democratic
remit, which issues aren't going to be discussed, which issues they agree on. They decide that. We, the electorate, don't have a choice.
That's why many people would think it's undemocratic that they can't vote for a mainstream party with an alternative opinion.
Halina Ward: I think what this really points to is in a democracy are there issues where the sum of individual views can be overridden by
something else, and what's the something else that overrides the sum of the individual views? And to me it's that combination of risk of
catastrophic impacts, plus a pretty solid basis of scientific evidence suggesting that we need to take precautionary action. In my view that
makes it okay for the three major political parties to take climate change seriously even though there's a significant percentage of the
electorate who don't believe that our actions today as consumers and as human beings generates negative impacts.
Justin Rowlatt: But aren't you now sounding a bit like James Lovelock and saying in this area we'll suspend democracy?
Halina Ward: I certainly don't think that means that I'm suspending democracy.
Justin Rowlatt: Well you are over debate about what we should do about climate change. It's exactly what you're saying, isn't it?
Halina Ward: It's not a suspension of democracy.
Justin Rowlatt: Okay …
Halina Ward: It's recognising that this can happen in a democracy and it doesn't fundamentally drive a nail in the heart … through the heart of democracy. It's an acceptable compromise in a democracy.
Justin Rowlatt: The electorate may find that compromise acceptable while the costs of mitigating climate change are relatively low but they are set to rise. The Labour government estimated that cost of building renewable energy infrastructure will add 6% to everyone's electricity
bills. Gordon Brown's former special advisor on climate change Michael Jacobs, says that as costs rise the electorate may rebel.
Michael Jacobs: I think governments face a knife edge here. Governments will have to put prices up for petrol, for energy, but they will also have to limit those price rises to keep the public's consent. I think there is a happy medium, but it is a bit of a knife edge and you could fall off
either side. You can either raise prices too far, lose consent and then lose consent for the whole attack on climate change, or you can not
raise them far … fast enough or far enough and then find that you're not really dealing with the problem. That is what political leadership
and skilful political management is about, and we will have to see those qualities in our government. This is not an easy issue. It's not an
impossible one, but it will take real political skill.
Justin Rowlatt: I mean it's interesting that you raise that because going into this election, the Conservative Party said it would scrap the fuel
duty escalator and yet it's a party that says it's committed to the fight against climate change.
Michael Jacobs: One of the real risks in all of this is that in any political system - British or any other - one of the parties decides to opt out of this agenda and say no, we will go for the short-term vote to keep costs down. It's probably easy even in a country that is quite well educated
about climate change to create a populist mood against action on it, of which the fuel duty protests ten years ago were an example. If any one
party did that – it would pose real risks because it would any party did that, there would be real risks because other parties would be tempted to go down the same route. The newspapers might decide to pile in behind that and you might then find that you had a sort of populist movement against it.…And if climate change ever became the preserve of an elite while a populist revolt worked against it, then I think we would be in trouble.
Justin Rowlatt: Climate change has not become a party political issue in Britain but like Michael Jacobs, Mark Littlewood of the Institute of
Economic Affairs believes it has the potential to do so. Littlewood is sceptical about the science of climate change and points out that, very
broadly, those who believe the science of global warming tend to be on the left while those that don't tend to be on the right.
Mark Littlewood: You'll find by and large, generally speaking - and I'm not ascribing ill motive to them - but generally speaking those who are calling for urgent and serious action on climate change with carbon taxes or government plans to solve it also advocate high government
spending and big government in other areas of life. And what I'm concerned about is this belief that big government, high spending
solutions concocted in some office in Whitehall are the best way of solving the problems facing humanity.
Justin Rowlatt: There may be political consensus on the climate issue here in Britain but global warming is, by definition, an international issue and requires international solutions. America is one of the most polluting nations on earth and its participation is essential for any action on emissions to be successful. But as Mark Lynas points out, in America the climate issue divides across party lines with – broadly speaking – most Democrats arguing for action on climate change and most Republicans arguing against it. That's made cutting carbon emissions difficult.
Mark Lynas: I mean America is just beginning to build its first offshore wind farm. I mean that's pathetic. The same with nuclear. They've got
no nuclear power stations even on planning at the moment. Because the decisions are so tough in dealing with climate change, there's been a
big backlash and a large fraction, even possibly a majority of the general public in Europe and also in the United States have decided that
climate change doesn't exist because it's easier for them to believe that and it's being pushed by the Right Wing media and so on. So I think
that is a reflection of how difficult this is for our modern societies to solve.
Justin Rowlatt: So, with no consensus on the issue, do environmentalists believe action is impossible in America? Arnold Schwarzenegger's
advisor on climate change, Terry Tamminen, says that a more local kind of democratic progress is possible, operating at state rather than
Federal level.
Terry Tamminen: The states tend to be the living laboratories where concepts are proven, where technologies are proven, and so I think it's
very important to note that again California passed its rules about renewable energy and tailpipe emission standards and other things
which now thirty plus of our fifty states have copied at some level. In many cases we've found success in the states in approaching these
issues from people's self-interest. What's the most important? Well you know shelter and warmth and saving money. So when you help people
save money by changing out inefficient, incandescent light bulbs for more efficient compact fluorescence or LEDs that last longer and save
them money, they can understand that. Today California is 40% more energy efficient than the average American. If you've been here
recently, you know that's not because we don't have our flat panel TVs or our Jacuzzis and our air conditioners in the desert - it's because of
these efficiency standards. And when you get enough states doing things like this then Congress will follow because they have both the
proof of concept and the political support coming from the states.
Justin Rowlatt: Even if some action is being taken at a state level it is piecemeal and partial. And, just as in Britain, as the costs start to rise
even this relatively modest action may become increasingly difficult – would Americans accept carbon taxes on petrol, for example? Which
explains why some environmentalists cast an envious eye towards countries like China. It may still burn a lot of coal it but it has also
invested heavily to create the world's biggest low carbon industry. No need to worry about the niceties of obtaining democratic consent there,
says Mark Lynas.
Mark Lynas: Well China's just getting on and doing it. I mean they don't have to worry about local planning enquiries when they want to build a new nuclear power station or a coal fired power station for that matter. For the Communist Party to stay in power, they need to deliver constant double digit economic growth to their population. They're worried that any international agreement on carbon means they won't be able to do that.
Justin Rowlatt: So they'll sacrifice that low carbon technologies for economic development, won't they?
Mark Lynas: Yes. For the Chinese, if coal is necessary to keep the Communist Party in power, they will choose coal over the climate.
That's what Copenhagen was all about.
Justin Rowlatt: The problem is that the legitimacy of the Chinese regime is dependent on delivering ever improving standards of living and other objectives – however important - must be subjugated to that goal. In democracies, however, legitimacy is based on the idea that government represents the freely expressed will of the people. Democratic institutions may therefore actually be better able to take tough decisions than authoritarian regimes, says Michael Jacobs, but only if there has been an open debate.
Michael Jacobs: In the end authoritarian systems always come up against the consent of the people, and unless people understand why you're doing it, they trust your reasons for doing it as a government, you won't win their consent; and if you can't do that, then in the end those systems will be unable to do it themselves. So I don't think authoritarianism will work, as well as being wrong.
Justin Rowlatt: So consent requires a wide debate but, as Michael Jacobs has already said, in Britain legislation has been passed without much reference to the views of the electorate. So the sooner a much fuller discussion begins the better says Professor Andrew Dobson of Keele University, who was one of the authors of the Green Party's manifesto for the recent general election. He refers back to John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth century political theorist, for support.
Andrew Dobson: John Stuart Mill pointed out a long time ago that the more people you have debating a situation, the more likely perhaps it is that you'll come to as it were the right answer. Democracy as a system of government and providing forms of discussion enables those sorts of problems to be aired and the evidence to be aired and to be evaluated.
Justin Rowlatt: Well hold on a second, Andrew, because John Stuart Mill also talked about “the tyranny of the majority”, didn't he? And if the
majority of people don't believe in climate change, we won't do anything, will we?
Andrew Dobson: Well this is the other thing about democracy - is that majorities can be turned into minorities and vice versa. Minorities
always have the possibility in these contexts of changing the minds of the majority and vice versa. So again I think that arguably democracy
provides us with the best context, the best possibility for ensuring that as it were in the end the truth will out.
Justin Rowlatt: The idea of a thorough debate from which the ideal solution will emerge sounds like a vision of democratic perfection. But
it may be naïve to expect everyone to converge around the environmentalist position. By all means bring some more democracy into the debate says Mark Littlewood of the Institute of Economic Affairs. But expect the argument that ensues to be very challenging.
Mark Littlewood: I think that the Green lobby has to some extent overplayed its hand and there are dangers in doing that. If you are
trying to persuade people of a particular state of affairs, tell them the truth. Don't actually try to over spin it or overplay it.
Justin Rowlatt: The problem is they say that by the time you see these catastrophic effects; it will by definition be too late.
Mark Littlewood: They do say that, but the question is whether you should believe them or trust them in saying that. They would say that,
wouldn't they? You have to adopt this policy now because I and I alone am enlightened enough to know what the consequences of you not
adopting it would be, and I'm afraid I can't adduce particularly compelling evidence to support that hypothesis at the present time, so
you're going to have to take it on trust. And if you don't take it on trust, I'm going to have to remove some of your rights and freedoms and
basic parts of your lifestyle that you value in order to make sure I get my own way. I mean it strikes me that is not a completely unfair
analysis in potted form of the assertion being made, and what has to happen is it can't just be on a "this might occur", "that might occur". It
needs to be considerably more robust than that. If you are asking people to pay more taxes or surrender certain lifestyles or change the way they live, you've got to have a compelling case as to why.
Justin Rowlatt: Mayer Hillman is very familiar with this kind of scepticism and the reluctance to change lifestyles. He's been campaigning on the climate issue for decades and believes that time has already run out to persuade people of its urgency. He now believes the choice is between democracy and the survival of the human species.
Mayer Hillman: We have an obligation to look after the interests of future generations because they're going to have to live in a world which is in a deteriorating condition. And we already, some of us, can see the lives that our children and grandchildren are going to have to live within, and it is pretty horrific and it is because we're not prepared to make the changes necessary. Democracy allows people the freedom not to be obliged to do things that we know we must do, so how can one possibly say yes but the principle of democracy must prevail over and above protection of the global environment from excessive burning of fossil fuels? Given the choice, I would sadly - very, very sadly - say that the condition of the planet in the future for future generations is more important than the retention of democratic principles.
Michael Jacobs: Am I confident that democracy is the best system, possibly the only system for dealing with it? Yes. Am I confident that
democratic systems will deal with the issue of climate change? No.
Justin Rowlatt: Michael Jacobs is well aware of how climate change exposes some of the shortcomings of democratic systems.
Michael Jacobs: It is a very, very big issue. We have to act on it urgently. We have to take radical actions which will hurt some vested interests. People will find them difficult. So yes we have to use the democratic system to do so, but nobody can predict the future, so we can't be confident that it will happen in the sense of being able to predict it. But as someone once said, the question is not simply to understand this but to change it.
Justin Rowlatt: It is common, as James Lovelock does, to compare tackling climate change to war - but actually it is a bigger challenge
even than that. In this battle there is no clear enemy – it is caused by the everyday actions of everyone on earth. It is not easy to persuade
people they need to make big changes to the way they live now on the basis of uncertain and contestable benefits at some unspecified time in the future. The most pessimistic environmentalists suggesting suspending democracy are likely to remain a minority, not least because
there is no obvious alternative. But what seems certain is that the challenge of tackling climate change will test democratic institutions as
never before.