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.

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.