Voting Away the Planet

can democracy save the environment?

Tonight I would like to write about climate change and democracy. This will not be an optimistic post. Stripped to its bare minimum, democracy is a decision making apparatus. Although democratic government has come to be associated with other important ideas (such as the protection of liberty and the value and dignity due every citizen), at its core it’s a way for people to make choices. The general theory behind democratic politics is that the aggregate self-interests of the polity will combine to make better decisions than any sort of central planner or dictator. Historically, this has been a fairly effective system. It is said that democracies almost never go to war with others (though democratizing countries are often belligerent) and that they rarely have famines. Because of this, at first it seems as though if any system can deal with the difficulties of climate change, it would be liberal democracy.

But although democracy is generally a fairly effective mechanism for making decisions, there are a few types of decisions that it cannot handle well. First off, most people are pretty bad at internalizing costs that occur far into the future and so bias present concerns against later ones. Indeed, one of the reasons why we consider the state justified in paternalistic regulation of some vices is that it is assumed people can’t calculate harms that are far removed from present reality. Second, people aren’t generally great in making intuitive calculations with very large numbers or risks that are catastrophically large. When people ride without seatbelts its usually not because they expect they will die but rather because they are irrationally sure that they will not. Finally, people are far more likely to be drawn to tangible, tactile issues over vague, theoretical concerns. Known as the availability heuristic, this cognitive bias suggests that the more easily a real, vivid example can be brought to mind the more probable a situation is.

Of course, each of these biases is grounded in human evolution. Ultra-long term planning skills are not particularly useful to apes roaming the forest, while prioritizing some distant future over present concerns would likely end in starvation. The availability heuristic is no disadvantage in a world where the greatest dangers (predators, steep falls) were easily imaginable and could be taken from experience. Likewise the calculation of very large numbers would never be necessary on the savannah, and so would not prove genetically useful.

But although this trio of heuristics may have perfectly logical roots, it means that many of the complexities of the modern world elude the gut reaction of our primate brains. Take, for instance, global climate change. Today few in the scientific community doubt that human activity is increasing the planet’s temperature, and that if left unchecked this change could have disastrous consequences worldwide. Unfortunately, because global climate change deals with a risk far in the future, because it involves tremendous numbers and most of all because it will be fairly intangible to the average voter until far too late, democracies have yet to embrace the sort of changes needed. Of course, some argue that this paradigm is shifting fast, with more and more people saying that global warming concerns them. And indeed, a 2006 poll showed that 49 percent of people called global warming very or extremely important to them personally, with an additional 10 percent claiming it was somewhat important. On face, this looks like a fantastic development that proves that democracies can, in fact, address the problem. After all, 59 is greater than 50, and any coalition greater than 50 gets to make the rules. But the problem with this sort of survey is it doesn’t force people to choose. Since there is effectively no cost to saying that one finds a given topic “important”, it is likely that many will do so. Yet when voters go to the ballot box and face actual choices between addressing the nebulous, distant, and transnational threat of global warming or the daily, tangible realities of roads, hospitals, and schools, they will almost invariably opt for the latter. Indeed, this lack of political will holds not merely in the United States, but also in the so-called “green” nations of Europe, almost of all which are on pace to exceed their Kyoto quotas.


evolution is working against us

More importantly, though, even if everyone followed Kyoto to the letter, the impact would almost immediately be washed away by the exponential economic growth of the developing world. In a timely column on climate change and global growth in today’s New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman described two cities which he has visited this week, Doha, Qatar and Dalian, China. What unites these two metropolises is that in the past decade they have seemed to spring up almost overnight. Friedman observes

In Doha, since I was last there, a skyline that looks like a mini-Manhattan has sprouted from the desert. Whatever construction cranes are not in China must be in Doha today. This once sleepy harbor now has a profile of skyscrapers, thanks to a huge injection of oil and gas revenues. Dalian, with six million people, already had a mini-Manhattan when I was last here. It seems to have grown two more since — including a gleaming new convention complex built on a man-made peninsula.

But this sort of growth has a dark side to it; namely the fact that as living standards soar worldwide in the age of globalization emission rates are keeping pace. And so because:
a. There are so many people in the developing world
b. Everyone wants to live like an American

The result is that even if rich liberal democracies DO get it together in some slight way, it won’t be enough. Or to quote Friedman’s dark conclusion:

Hey, I’m really glad you switched to long-lasting compact fluorescent light bulbs in your house. But the growth in Doha and Dalian ate all your energy savings for breakfast. I’m glad you bought a hybrid car. But Doha and Dalian devoured that before noon. I am glad that the U.S. Congress is debating whether to bring U.S. auto mileage requirements up to European levels by 2020. Doha and Dalian will have those gains for lunch — maybe just the first course. I’m glad that solar and wind power are “soaring” toward 2 percent of U.S. energy generation, but Doha and Dalian will devour all those gains for dinner. I am thrilled that you are now doing the “20 green things” suggested by your favorite American magazine. Doha and Dalian will snack on them all, like popcorn before bedtime.

so says friedman


Against this backdrop, quibbles about Kyoto seem positively picayune. A sea change is needed, and for the reasons delineated above a sea change will never happen.

But although democracies all suffer from the sorts of crippling biases described and thus seem unlikely to voluntarily make the sort of drastic changes that may be needed, undemocratic organizations and groups have shown a tenacious willingness to adapt. Though it is counterintuitive, big business in the US is actually turning around fairly quickly with regard to climate change. Because a corporation’s leaders are largely trained precisely to avoid the sorts of fallacies that mislead voters and to think in the long term, and because they don’t have to balance nearly as many interests as the modern nation state, they have also been ahead of governments in many key ways. (For an interesting example of this, look no further than everyone’s favorite empire-corporation, Wal-mart ). Realizing that carbon emissions are a serious problem, many far-sighted CEOs are already drafting strategies and preparing detailed plans to operate in a post-carbon economy. Although obviously not all companies are on board, the corporate sector nonetheless furnishes examples of how fast a large organization can adapt to new ecological norms when it takes the long view and reads the writing on the wall.

But on a government scale, it may be possible that the only political mechanism that could possibly prevent ecological collapse is not a democratic one. For this, one may look to China. Let me begin by saying that China’s environment, as it stands today, is a disastrous mess. In my two months in Beijing I rarely saw blue sky, and when I did it was because of government cloud seeding helicopters that had artificially altered the weather. Yet because China is ruled by a small cadre of politicians who are nothing if not long term thinkers, the environment has become a major priority. Furthermore, if global warming or other ecological disasters require radical societal change, China has the institutional tools (and lack of democratic checks) to make it happen. Factory pollutes too much? Shut it down without compensation. All buildings need super-low emissions? No pesky workers rights lobby. People can’t internalize the long term, intangible risks of global warming? No biggie; they can’t vote.

Which brings us to today’s conclusion. It is essential that we in liberal democracies strive to think in the long term, strive to combat global warming and other such policy challenges aggressively and above all else seek to make good choices. Because if democracy doesn’t give us the right political answers to questions that will define our future as a species, a system we like far less just might.