Time Magazine wonders if democracy is good for Doing Something about ‘climate change’. The very fact that they are asking this tells you all you need to know, even as Warmist Justin Worland soft-peddles that what we really need is authoritarianism, which is humorous considering Democrats keep yammering about our Democracy Being At Stake
It’s the World’s Biggest Election Year. Is Democracy Good for Climate Change?
This year is the biggest election year on record. Voters in more than 60 countries—including four of the five most populated—will go to the polls in 2024.
And in all of them, climate change is unavoidably on the ballot. Last year was the hottest year on record; this year is expected to be even hotter. The actions that countries take in the coming years will determine the trajectory of future emissions. Yet, despite this reality, climate change remains largely on the electoral campaign backburner.
These two facts side by side—the urgent need to address climate change and the widespread apathy toward the issue in a critical election year—point to an important reality: efforts to tackle climate change face a democracy challenge.
The critical timing of this election year, when nations must rapidly accelerate climate action to keep any hope of meeting the Paris Agreement’s goals alive, offers a lens into the knotty challenges of building democratic support for climate policy. Democracies move on public sentiment, and the best time to galvanize public support is around elections. This year, climate change remains a relatively low priority for the average voter in most places across the globe, seemingly less pressing than immediate economic concerns.
See, and that’s a Big Problem for the Cult of Climastrology, namely, that citizens may say they care about doing something about climate doom, but, in practice, it’s a low-hanging issue, and they do not want all those things like higher taxes and restrictions on their own lives.
For many politicians, the easy solution is to kick the can down the road until after their next election. But doing so also poses a threat to democracy. The challenges created by climate change—unchecked migration, economic stagnation, and the loss of homeland, to name a few—are precisely the kind of developments that have historically fomented authoritarian sentiments.
Letting tons of 3rd world people with 3rd world attitudes into the U.S. unfettered is because of a slight increase in the global temperature since 1850? Yes, this is a cult. Poor economic conditions? This is a cult.
Both elections speak to the core of climate change’s democracy challenge. Climate change, as urgent as the scientific reality may be, feels less urgent to voters than their economic challenges. And elected officials respond to that to win elections.
How dare they listen to the citizens!
In Europe, where voters will elect members to the European Parliament in June, climate change is running up against a different sort of democracy problem. For decades, the E.U. has taken a leading role combating climate change, in large part because the public supported it. The bloc implemented a carbon pricing mechanism in 2005, for example, and more recently created a Green Deal program designed to bring down Europe’s emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. But fear has grown that some citizens feel recent measures have gone too far. Last year, German industry created an uproar over the bloc’s aggressive electric vehicle regulations, and Dutch farmers launched a revolt over policies that target high-emitting fertilizer. The high cost of energy, primarily due to ripples from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have created political tensions across the continent. Many in Brussels fear that those concerns have contributed to the recent spike in right-wing populism that has long been simmering on the continent. In the Netherlands, most obviously, voters last fall dumped the longtime prime minister in favor of a far-right candidate.
Stupid peasants!
Climate change’s democracy challenge has come up time and again in my reporting over the years. No one has the silver bullet to fix it, but there is a common thread among those who think about it: something needs to be change so that the policy timeline in democracies can match the urgency of the climate crisis.
In other words, the peasants need to listen to their Elites, and just do as their told.
Read: Bummer: “efforts to tackle climate change face a democracy challenge” »
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