Climate scientists against democracy

One of the arguably most progressive movements of our times – environmentalists fighting global warming and climate change – shows signs of turning anti-democratic in the wake of the perceived failure of the climate summit in Copenhagen.

Before Copenhagen, hardly anyone took notice of anti-democratic thought arising out of environmental science, one of the most fashionable fields of research at this time. Let me highlight some of the recent developments.

Two years ago, Australians David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith published a book called "The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy" (Praeger, 2007):

www.praeger.com/catalog/C34504.aspx

From the publisher's description: "Climate change threatens the future of civilization, but humanity is impotent in effecting solutions. Even in those nations with a commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions, they continue to rise. This failure mirrors those in many other spheres that deplete the fish of the sea, erode fertile land, destroy native forests, pollute rivers and streams, and utilize the world's natural resources beyond their replacement rate.

"In this provocative book, Shearman and Smith present evidence that the fundamental problem causing environmental destruction – and climate change in particular – is the operation of liberal democracy. Its flaws and contradictions bestow upon government – and its institutions, laws, and the markets and corporations that provide its sustenance – an inability to make decisions that could provide a sustainable society.

"Having argued that democracy has failed humanity, the authors go even further and demonstrate that this failure can easily lead to authoritarianism without our even noticing. Even more provocatively, they assert that there is merit in preparing for this eventuality if we want to survive climate change. They are not suggesting that existing authoritarian regimes are more successful in mitigating greenhouse emissions, for to be successful economically they have adopted the market system with alacrity. Nevertheless, the authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power.

"There are in existence highly successful authoritarian structures – for example, in medicine and in corporate empires – that are capable of implementing urgent decisions impossible under liberal democracy. Society is verging on a philosophical choice between liberty or life."

It is certainly noteworthy that both authors did not work at universities at the time this book was published – and haven't done so since. After holding faculty positions at Edinburgh and Yale, Shearman now works as a practicing physician. Smith is described as a lawyer, philosopher, and book author. Predictably, just like my own book, "Anti-Democratic Thought" (Imprint Academic, 2008), they received largely negative and even hostile reader reviews, simply for opposing democracy – along the lines of "Superficial Diatribe" and "Genocide, anyone? Sure would cut the ol' carbon footprint if you could just feed all those consumers and wrong-thinkers into the shredders ..."

Few academics showed themselves supportive: "For those wanting to think outside the square on climate change issues, this book is indispensable" (Bob Birrell, Monash); "This is an argument-moving book, a fresh and audacious contribution to the climate change debate" (Otis L. Graham, University of California, Santa Barbara); "If political thinking at its best makes the pressing questions of the day an occasion to revisit cherished fundamentals, then this book qualifies" (Gordon Graham, Princeton Theological Seminary – a fellow Imprint Academic author and critic of democracy).

However, since then a number of climate scientists have adopted positions akin to those advanced by Shearman and Smith. James Hansen, for example, a renowned climate modeller with NASA (and billed as "[t]he scientist who convinced the world to take notice [...] of global warming"), is quoted in the Guardian as saying "that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. 'The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working,'" for "money is talking louder than the votes". "In Hansen's view, dealing with climate change allows no room for the compromises that rule the world of elected politics."

90-year-old British scientist James Lovelock (also a former NASA consultant and named one of the world's top-100 global public intellectuals by Prospect magazine in 2005), in "The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning" (Allen Lane, 2009), may be appalling his readers, according to Publishers Weekly, with "his contention that democracy may need to be abandoned to appropriately confront the challenge [of climate change]":

www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781846141850,00.html?/The_Vanishing_Face_of_Gaia_James_Lovelock

Hansen and Lovelock, too, have gained the freedom to say what they really think about democracy (and its dangers) by not standing in the (sole) employ of a university. While Hansen only holds an adjunct professorship at Columbia, Lovelock, though having been an honorary visiting fellow at an Oxford college since 1994, works independently out of his private laboratory.

Much more in this vein can be found in the fora and on message boards of the environmental science community.

It remains to be seen whether such sentiments uttered more frequently by climate scientists will be able to turn public opinion against democracy, and if the protesters that got themselves beat up and arrested on the streets of Copenhagen will turn away from the anti-authoritarian and decentralized grassroots democracy that is still the preferred mode of operation of most anti- and alter-globalization and environmental activism.

Also, Shearman and Smith are correct to stress that the environmental record of today's authoritarian regimes is by no means better than that of democratic governments. From what we heard last week, it appears that China with her obstruction policy is largely responsible for the apparent failure of the Copenhagen summit – for which the western democracies took the blame. China is not interested in curtailing her economic and industrial growth and the burgeoning capitalism (which, in time, will lead to democratic reforms).

Rule by experts, as proposed by climate scientists, is not a new idea either, though. It is as old as Plato's philosopher kings, H.G. Wells' liberal fascism, communist planning, and the EU bureaucracy. Let's just say, it hasn't worked.

We need new alternatives.

Phillip Blond's "ResPublica" think tank and Radical Orthodoxy

One of the hundreds of people who participated in events organized by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) is Phillip Blond.

Those living in the UK may by now be familiar with that name. In 2007, when Phillip gave a presentation in the Section "Political Theology as Political Theory" that I organized and chaired at the Fourth General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), he was but a lowly Senior Lecturer in theology and philosophy at what had only just become the University of Cumbria.

Phillip also participated in the Second Annual International Symposium of SCIS on "The Resurgence of Political Theology". Both events took place in September 2007 in Pisa, Italy.

Then, Phillip worried about how he was going to continue paying his mortgage on a meagre academic salary and he and his frequent collaborator and journalistic co-author, Adrian Pabst, talked about starting an online newspaper. This year, Phillip has been hailed as Tory leader (and possible prime minister come May 2010) David Cameron's "philosopher king", and been able to raise 1.5 million pounds to launch his own think tank, called (rather unimaginatively) "ResPublica":

www.respublica.org.uk

ResPublica was launched on 26 November in the presence of Cameron, but the financial backers behind it remain anonymous. It stands to reason, though, that they are in support of the ideas associated with what Phillip calls "Red Toryism". Already in Pisa, if memory serves correctly, he carried notes toward the manuscript of a book on this subject in his bag, but only in February 2009 he published an article outlining his ideas in the magazine "Prospect".

The book, "Red Tory", will not be published until April 2010 – and I should not be surprised if it won't be published at all before the UK general elections likely to take place in May 2010. (After all, Phillip's only previous monograph, "Eyes of Faith", was scheduled for publication in 2006 and has still not been released.)

Faber and Faber, who are to publish "Red Tory", have meanwhile issued a book description: "Conventional politics is at crossroads. Amid recession, depression, poverty, increasing violence and rising inequality, our current politics is exhausted and inadequate.

"In 'Red Tory', Phillip Blond argues that only a radical new political settlement can tackle the problems we face. Red Toryism combines economic egalitarianism with social conservatism, calling for an end to the monopolisation of society and the private sphere by the state and the market. Decrying the legacy of both the Labour and Conservative parties, Blond proposes a genuinely progressive Conservatism that will restore social equality and revive British culture. He calls for the strengthening of local communities and economies, ending dispossession, redistribution of the tax burden and restoration [of] the nuclear family.

"'Red Tory' offers a different vision for our future and asks us to question our long-held political assumptions. No political thinker has aroused more passionate debate in recent times. Phillip Blond's ideas have already been praised or attacked in every major British newspaper and journal. Challenging, stimulating and exhilarating, this is a book for our times."

There is a lot of hype. And that alone should give reason to be wary. As an academic, in Pisa, I found Phillip both unimpressive and unprepared. In fact, I am still waiting to receive the full text of the paper he was accepted to be giving and which I should have got prior to the conference. Phillip turned up with nothing but notes and extrapolated from those. Of the two, I always found Adrian Pabst, also a participant in Pisa (and in 2008 in a panel on "Comparative Political Theology" I organized at the Second Global International Studies Conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia), intellectually sounder and more stimulating.

Of course, David Cameron, on becoming leader of the Tories, had as little to offer in terms of his CV as Phillip has now. It all seems to be more about connections and being at the right place at the right moment with the right set of vague ideas and attitudes. Does anyone know what Cameron stands for after having been Tory leader for four years? It is hard to believe – though of course entirely in the nature of democracy – that the UK electorate would fall for a David Cameron after having rid themselves of the vacuum that was Tony Blair.

"Red Toryism" may be in 2010 what "New Labour" was in the late 1990s. Red Toryism is an ideology that came to bloom in the financial crisis, when all former boundaries between left and right, economy and state became finally blurred, and it was helped by the blurring that economy-friendly New Labour had done earlier. In fact, Red Toryism is not imaginable without New Labour preceding it.

Both Adrian Pabst (University of Nottingham) and Phillip Blond, along with Graham Ward (University of Manchester), represented the Anglican Radical Orthodoxy movement in Pisa. Radical Orthodoxy set out, hardly ten years ago, from Cambridge's Peterhouse College to renew the Church of England. Already the current Archbishop of Canterbury, and head of the Anglican community, Rowan Williams, is said to be an adherent of Radical Orthodoxy. And now the movement has gained influence over Tory policy and the likely next prime minister.

Of course, the ResPublica website does not openly refer to Radical Orthodoxy, and Phillip is not saying much about it in his interviews. The only clear reference to it is that John Milbank (University of Nottingham), "founder of the Radical Orthodoxy Movement" and Phillip's PhD supervisor (and himself a student of Williams), is listed as a Fellow of ResPublica. Radical-orthodox political theology has a chance to become for the UK what black liberation theology arguably has become under Barack Obama in the US.

One reason why the influence of Radical Orthodoxy on Red Toryism may be downplayed is the confusion of religious identity that embroils Radical Orthodoxy. While Phillip converted as an adult from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism, one gets the impression that the Radical Orthodox consider themselves to be Catholics within the Church of England (in the "High Church" or "Anglo-Catholic" tradition). They are the very people, it would seem, the Vatican now wants to attract into its fold by offering them a separate structure within the Roman Catholic Church. Radical Orthodoxy, however, rather aims at "taking over" the Church of England. Either way, such Catholic sympathies remain suspicious in the UK, as Tony Blair demonstrated when converting to Catholicism only after having left public office.

Papers not written, books not published ... Philipp continues to work from notes. While there are many introductions to Radical Orthodoxy, all anyone knows about Red Toryism is still schematic, a fragment. It may remain so until after the UK general elections, and afterwards Phillip may be too busy to actually write the book. On the other hand, his think tank now provides him with people who may well write it for him. Very little about Tory policy is worked out and now Cameron got Phillip to work it out for him. Very little about Red Toryism is worked out and now Phillip got others to work it out for him ...

May we hope that the book (maybe helped by others) will clarify at least some of the confusion ResPublica and Phillip's writings still show? For instance, is he now against capitalism, or for capitalism – as his "mutualism" concept seems to be an extension of capitalism to the public sector (much as "New Public Management" extended New Labour's economy-friendliness to the public sector with public-private partnerships, etc.): as I understand it, public sector employees are to get shares in mutually-owned public service-providing companies, giving employees more control. But will that not mean that managers of such entities will be under less control from above and from the public?

Phillip's stepbrother is the current incarnation of James Bond, the actor Daniel Craig – already in Her Majesty's (Secret) Service. As Phillip may turn out to be soon.

Or then, his fall may be as quick as his unlikely rise.

Tadzio Müller arrested at climate summit protests

Being a "global warming sceptic" myself, I didn't plan on writing about the climate summit in Copenhagen. One more futile exercise owed to the hubris of man who basks in the sham glory of being the only species able to "destroy Earth". Really, though, it is only mankind and/or our way of life that we might be destroying. And would that be all bad?

It is not in our hands to destroy Earth. Unlike us, Earth has been around for billions of years, and – albeit changing incessantly – existed through warmer and colder periods much the same. That's one of the things Alex Higgins and I didn't see eye to eye on when founding the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) back in 2006.

Enough is being said about this. No point in adding to it.

However, I just learned that in Copenhagen again someone associated with SCIS has been arrested – and remains imprisoned – for his political stance.

Among the many graduate students and doctoral candidates at the fringes of SCIS when it was founded at the University of Sussex, and a repeat guest in the original centre when it was still on campus, was one Tadzio Müller, a German alter-globalization activist who did his DPhil in International Relations at Sussex.

Obviously, with his left-leaning ideas, he fitted the Sussex profile much better than I ever did. That didn't save him from being arrested, though.

As the media and various blogs report, Tadzio – who is now a spokesperson for an organization called Climate Justice Action (CJA) – was selectively arrested on 15 December by plainclothes police officers following a press conference he gave at the summit venue. He stands accused of preparing for violence against the police and incitement to riot.

A charge that seems only the more ludicrous if one has seen the violence with which the Danish police are trying to contain protesters on the streets of Copenhagen, freely employing dogs, batons, and pepper spray (check out videos on Youtube). No chance that they will be held responsible for their actions.

More interestingly even, it has been revealed that Tadzio's arrest was only possible because of covert surveillance measures. The Danish police not only infiltrated protesters' preparatory meetings on a broad scale, but also tapped their mobile phones (calls and SMS), and intercepted the e-mails of known activists.

"People have to break the rules", Tadzio is reported as saying. Protesters should not allow themselves to be stopped by fences or other physical barriers. Or police intimidation, one might add.

Even if one does not believe in the great climate myth, one may be sympathetic with the activists who try to turn the climate debate into a debate against global capitalism. "Climate" merely seems a catchword for many of the protesters in Copenhagen.

Book: Hong Kong's informal rooftop communities

A book from China's capitalist and democratic outpost, Hong Kong:

Stefan Canham (photographs) and Rufina Wu (architectural drawings) collaborated on "Portraits from above: Hong Kong's informal rooftop communities" (Peperoni Books, 2009).

http://peperoni-books.de/portraits_from_above0.html

Publisher's description: "Self-built, informal settlements on the roofs of high-rise buildings are an integral part of Hong Kong's urban landscape. The rise of rooftop communities is closely linked to the migration history from Chinese Mainland to Hong Kong. With each of China's tumultuous political movements in the 20th century, like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, there was a corresponding wave of Mainland Chinese migrating to Hong Kong."

From the preface: "The roof is a maze of corridors, narrow passageways between huts built of sheet metal, wood, brick and plastics. There are steps and ladders leading up to a second level of huts. [...] Later, we look down at the building from a higher one across the street. The roof is huge, like a village. There must be thirty or forty households on it. [...] Rooftop structures range from basic shelters for the disadvantaged to intricate multi-storey constructions equipped with the amenities of modern life.

"Text records of the residents' stories, measured drawings of each distinct rooftop structure, and high-resolution images of the domestic interiors of more than twenty households offer an unprecedented insight into the everyday life on Hong Kong's rooftops."

The book is bilingual, German and English.

Olivier Rubin refutes the merits of democracy in famine protection

For the 30th Anniversary Conference of the Development Studies Association (DSA), taking place in London in November 2008 on the theme of hidden forces in social and economic development – "Development's Invisible Hands" –, I convened a panel "Anti-Democratic Development".

One of the participants in that highly selective panel was Olivier Rubin (a recent PhD graduate and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen) who ended up winning the prize awarded by the European Journal of Development Research (EJDR) to the best conference paper for his essay, "The Merits of Democracy in Famine Protection – Fact or Fallacy?" – an ambitious attempt to refute (or at least draw into question) an influential theory of Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen (Harvard and Cambridge).

Rubin's paper has now been published in the November 2009 issue of EJDR (vol. 21/5: 699-717), as part of a Symposium of articles based on papers given in various panels of the 2008 conference. They treat forces as different as religion and conflict, political institutions, non-governmental action, the securitization of aid, and migration.

While I helped shape Rubin's paper both with extensive feedback after the conference and as peer reviewer for EJDR, I only provided input on fine-tuning an already impressive piece of work and all credit goes to him. That said, I greatly appreciate his public acknowledgement: "I wish to extend my gratitude to Erich Kofmel, Managing Director at the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS), for convening the DSA 2008 Panel on Anti-Democratic Development. This article is highly inspired by his somewhat provocative idea of an anti-democratic bias in much of the Development Studies discipline." Thank you.

The EJDR is now making Rubin's article accessible free of charge until the end of the year:

www.palgrave-journals.com/ejdr/journal/v21/n5/full/ejdr200937a.html

Here's the abstract of the paper: "Amartya Sen's assertion that democratic institutions together with a free press provide effective protection from famine is one of the most cited and broadly accepted contributions in modern famine theory. Through a mix of qualitative and quantitative evidence, this article critically examines whether indeed democracies do provide protection from famine. The qualitative research builds on analyses of democratic political dynamics in famine situations (in Bihar 1966, Malawi 2002 and Niger 2005), whereas the quantitative research looks for cross-country correlations between political systems and famine incidents. The article calls into question the strength of the link between democracy and famine protection. Famines have indeed occurred in electoral democracies where the political dynamics at times were counterproductive in providing protection from famine. The article concludes that to fully grasp the complexities of famine, one should replace monocausal political explanations (such as democracy protects against famine) with general tools for context-specific political analysis."

Rubin finds that, "[r]egrettably, the discipline of Development Studies has often had a tendency of displaying less interest in critically testing assertions about the merits of democratic institutions than it has in exposing the adverse consequences of more authoritarian political structures. [...]

"Pointing to democratic mechanisms with a positive effect on famine protection does not exclude the possibility that others, even more effective, can be identified under authoritarian rule. The argument about the merits of democracy in famine protection has clear roots in cost-effectiveness reasoning (given the assumed superiority of the democratic political system, what are the processes that could account for effective famine protection?) when one really ought to rely on cost-benefit reasoning (under different political rules, which political processes foster the most effective famine protection?).

"From the perspective of short-term famine relief, it is not difficult to present arguments that could favor a more authoritarian political system. Some of the counterproductive mechanisms described [for democracies] (log rolling, vote trading, pork barrel politics, not in my backyard and the political blame game) would be largely absent or assume a different form under authoritarian regimes. [...] It is also possible that authoritarian regimes could manage a much prompter and more extensive mobilization of resources for famine prevention when needed. An elected government might have to engage in compromises and negotiations with other political parties, which might not only slow down the process, but also avert resources to other political purposes through log rolling.

"Theoretically, therefore, the democracy hypothesis is not convincing."

In his article, Rubin refers to a Malawian saying: "Sungadye demokalase, which loosely translated means that you cannot eat democracy."

EJDR is a prestigious and well-regarded publication of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI).