Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; According to Foreign Policy, moving “beyond Democracy” towards an authoritarian Chinese system would allow governments to override the climate obstructionism of older voters, but they have concerns about the societal disruption the transition to authoritarianism would cause.
DEMOCRACY IS THE PLANET’S BIGGEST ENEMY
Young people care a lot about climate change—but most of them can’t vote. Here’s how governments can adapt to accommodate them.
BY DAVID RUNCIMAN
JULY 20, 2019In today’s Britain, a rare public figure can bring together Brexiteers and Remainers, Conservatives and Labour. Yet the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg did just that on a visit to London in April, when she was feted by British politicians from across the political spectrum.
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It would have taken a very brave politician to downplay the stark moral power of this message. None of her British interlocutors—from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to would-be Tory leader Michael Gove to the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow—dared. Instead, they all accepted the charges laid against them and promised to do better.
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If democratic politicians are to make good on their promises to Thunberg and her peers, one of the largest barriers in their way are their own electorates. And citizens may become more antagonistic as governments push forward on new policies. Tackling climate change is going to require significant behavioral change: in what we eat, where we live, and how we travel. Current patterns of food and energy consumption are unsustainable. If we and the planet are to survive, that will mean less meat, smaller homes, and fewer cars.
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If electoral democracy is inadequate to the task of addressing climate change, and the task is the most urgent one humanity faces, then other kinds of politics are urgently needed. The most radical alternative of all would be to consider moving beyond democracy altogether. The authoritarian Chinese system has some advantages when it comes to addressing climate change: One-party rule means freedom from electoral cycles and less need for public consultation. Technocratic solutions that put power in the hands of unelected experts could take key decisions out of the hands of voters.
But there are two reasons to doubt that this is what the climate emergency needs. First, any transition from a democratic to a post-democratic system would be massively disruptive. The barriers in the way of action on climate are also barriers to other forms of radical political change. There would be resistance, including from older generations. Second, it would not satisfy Thunberg’s generation either. She was not asking for less democracy. She was asking for a democracy in which she could be heard.
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Channeling more energy into these other forms of democracy—into citizens’ assemblies and civil disobedience, rather than elections and party-building—will change our politics drastically. But it may be the only way to ensure our planet does not change beyond recognition.
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Read more: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/20/democracy-is-the-planets-biggest-enemy-climate-change/
Entertaining as it is to watch a supporter place Antifa and Extinction Rebellion style protests on the spectrum of political activity which leads to Chinese style authoritarianism, I think we need to challenge these ugly climate activist attacks on representative democracy.
Organisations ranging from the Australian Government Broadcaster to former NASA GISS Director James Hansen, to Bill Gates to high profile university academics have praised totalitarianism as the solution to getting their own way on climate policy. Climate activists might be slowly losing the battle for hearts and minds, but they don’t plan to go down quietly.
I remember when one of my teachers taught us about the convenient crisis, the excuse which is used by power crazed murderers to sweep freedom aside, and install themselves as tyrants. But this was only one day of one class, and the teacher who provided that lesson left the school soon afterwards.
Nobody knows what happened to the brave man who stood up to the tank in Tiananmen Square. The story is two men ran out of the crowd and dragged him away from the tank, and bustled him off somewhere, though witnesses disagree whether the two men were worried bystanders or Chinese police.
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To reduce emissions we all need to adopt the same political system as the country that emits 30% of atotal global emissions.
“First, any transition from a democratic to a post-democratic system would be massively disruptive. ”
No sh*t Sherlock!
Converges towards socialism. No lie is too bold to achieve that most desirable goal. Only then can utopia emerge. Only then can humanity realize the perfect society.
Once in a while, they are stupid enough to announce what their real objective has been all along.
Funny how authoritarianism is a it less attractive if they are not the ones to be put in charge.
Somehow they never get around to specifying the means nor justification for their ascendency.
Strange that. Somehow, not one o the post-democratic goons we’ve seen take power in the 20th or
21st century has seen fit to put academic environmentalists in charge of things.
Least of all the Chinese, as many have noticed; or are those surgical masks folks wear from time to time in
Beijing a fashion statement?
No one in their right mind would turn the running of their household over to their teenagers, or even to their college aged kids. But people seriously contemplate turning over the economy and government to them?
If we had to depend on people under, say, even 30 years of age to run everything, the grid would have collapsed
in about 8 hours, and in two days our cities would resemble the scene from Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence runs desperately around the hospital looking for a tap that actually runs water. There is simply no critical mass in the lower age brackets who can keep a modern society running.
And, of course, the Arabs couldn’t keep the electricity going.
The postmodern Neo-Marxist SJW man hating feminists had better learn some history. If you collapse civilization, things become very miserable until it gets going again. I had friends who survived Germany at the end of WW2. I would say their situation was much more dire than that of the people I know who survived the dust bowl … and that, dear friends, is saying a lot.
Of course.
Progressives are all about tyranny to pursue social justice.
Climate justice is merely one of all issues needing progressive authoritarian regimes.
They know best what is for the greater good.
Noble cause corruption is now an epic progressive plague.
I wonder what else David Runciman has in his version of Mein Kampf
Those who imagine totalitarianism somehow cannot imagine themselves on the sharp end of it.
Tom Friedman approves this message:
I have nothing more to add to this, except maybe: if it’s got to come to war to retain what freedom we have left, so be it.
“Michael H Anderson July 29, 2019 at 8:18 am
I have nothing more to add to this, except maybe: if it’s got to come to war to retain what freedom we have left, so be it.”
The majority of guns are owned by Trump supporters.
The majority of the U.S. police forces support Trump supporters.
The majority of the U.S. Border Patrol supports Trump supporters.
The majority of the U.S. military support Trump supporters.
Etc………
ALL of the above support freedom over tyranny….
If it came to war, the fanatical left would last maybe 2 days. (depending on how long it takes them to unglue themselves from whatever object they decided to glue themselves to..Republicans and Conservatives are patient. They will wait until the idiots unglue themselves before irradicating them…Fair is fair…LOL
It’s true that conservatives have been patient – much too patient for much too long if you ask me, because once the left got the thin edge of the wedge in they just kept shoving. Enough of this latter-day hippie $hit informing everything in our society!
To show much he believes in these “Greenie Weenie” fairy tales, President Trump is now selling plastic “Trump Straws”. Made from 100% American Carbon ! Just gotta love his sense of humor…..MAGA !
“Channeling more energy into these other forms of democracy—into citizens’ assemblies and civil disobedience, rather than elections and party-building—will change our politics drastically. But it may be the only way to ensure our planet does not change beyond recognition.”
BAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, good luck with that nonsense. “Citizens assemblies”? What the frack are those? Oh wait, we already have ’em – they’re called “town meetings”. And as far as “civil disobedience”, there aren’t too many people who have the time/inclinitation to possibly being teargassed, firehosed, and/pr arrested, but yeah, go ahead and see how far that gets you.
‘the stark moral power of this message’
These types ALWAYS attempt to claim the moral high-ground while they consistently trash any legitimate morality.
So Agenda 21 has gone from conspiracy manifesto to road map with little recognition as most people aren’t aware of it or the fact it’s being driven by AGW. The easy part is over for the UN and the hard part is convincing successful Western Democracies to forgo their lifestyles so the rest of the world can better theirs. Not to catch up, maybe incrementally get better if at all. Which is doubtful given past Marxist attempts. Good luck with that.
In theory a benign, intelligent, beneficial authoritarian rule is possible.
Let’s say Trump had absolute power in the United States (the Leftists are fainting right now). He would have this country straightened out in about 18 months with good, workable programs for defense and healthcare and border security and inner-city development zones and about a million other projects to benefit everyone in the United States. A benevolent dictatorship could get things done much more efficiently by focusing the nation’s energies in those directions. He wouldn’t have to put up with small-minded, delusional people in order to get things done.
I believe Trump would do exactly that under those circumstances because I think Trump is a person who genuinely puts the U.S. before himself, so I think his policies would benefit us and not him. I know the Democrats would take a different view, but that’s my view. Their TDS view is completely delusional.
The only problem with benevolent dictators/Kings is they are very, very, very, few, and far between, and we can’t count on that being the case so the next best thing is to have a Republic like the United States that was created specifically to prevent dictators, benevolent or otherwise, from gaining power.
The Obama administration almost succeded in undermining the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. electoral process in their pursuit of power when they used the full power of the federal government to attack Trump and their other political enemies.
The only cure for this is to seriously punish those who tried to overthrow our form of government. If these criminal actions are not punished, then they will be repeated in the future and they might be successful the next time.
Trump needs to be reelected if this is to be done. If Trump is not reelected, then the new Democrat president will proceed to stop all future investigations of the Obama administration and the Deep State and the Authoritarians will have won.
Then our only hope will be that they are benevolent dictators. There’s not much chance of that though, considering the currently insane behavior of the Democrats.
“The only problem with benevolent dictators/Kings is they are very, very, very, few, and far between”
Kings may not be benevolent, but they want to leave a viable, rich country for their kids. And, if they don’t, one of those kids will probably put a knife in their back.
Elected politicians don’t have to care about anything beyond the next election, so many just take all the ‘contributions’ they can get before they’re kicked out. It requires a strong social moral compass to prevent them abusing their power to the limits of their abilities… and we no longer have one.
They don’t exist. Human ones, anyway. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The planet is in no danger, but these nitwits keep wringing their hands and carrying on in such a theatrical way that it almost makes me laugh.
Room for one more honey……in the Muslim detention facilities in western China. Twenty more compounds are planned or under construction.
WSJ
Chinese officials have applied the term vocational training broadly, including for detention camps where Uighurs say they were tortured and forced to renounce Islam.
Adrian Zenz, who researches Xinjiang’s camps, said the detention centers and shorter term job-training programs form a continuum of coercion. “In either case, these types of training are not really voluntary but government-mandated.”
“The authoritarian Chinese system has some advantages when it comes to addressing climate change…”
Mos def. That’s why China is the world’ largest emitter of CO2.
Excellent post, HotScot my friend.
Suggested reading for all Scots, and all the rest – who wish they were: 🙂
How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It
September 24, 2002
by Arthur Herman
An exciting account of the origins of the modern world
Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since.
Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong.
How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond.
And no one who takes this incredible historical trek will ever view the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again.
You forgot about golf and Donald Trump, who is presently trying to preserve Western Civilization.
The extremist solutions now being proposed are frightening – less people using less resources means extinction and poverty for many. Does Big Brother really know best?
Or is there hope at the end of the rainbow?
https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/07/04/90-leading-italian-scientists-sign-climate-petition-unproven-hypothesis-catastrophic-predictions-not-realistic/
The next big problem will be the simple fact that automation of industry, and computers in officers will result in far fewer real jobs.
Solution, well there are two basic ones, make it law that a husband wife household only one can be the breadwinner.
Second, reduce the working week to 20 hours, but the snag will be with the present high cost of living, and the way of life which is a cost factor, the persons working the 20 hour week will demand the present wages or even more.
The present crop of politicians simply refuse to face up to this coming situation.
MJE VK5ELL
I just had an absolutely brilliant idea! Instead of ditching democracy, just restrict the vote to those paying net income tax. That gets rid of most meat-eating, fuddy-duddy over 65s who think they can still drive a motor, AND excludes most teen-aged totalitarians.
I resemble that remark.
Governments can be compared based on one metric. How well the government serves the people, compared to how much the people are forced to serve the government.
Progress is made through competition for customers by suppliers. Without competition we get a reduction in value, because human nature chooses leisure over work, if given the choice. Without the incentive to better your own life through diligent effort, systems of limited or non-existent competition fail to deliver increases in value to customers who have no choice of suppliers.
This is true for the free market of goods and services, and is also true for choices in government. No choice in government means no incentive to rule in a way that is beneficial to the public. And even if you wanted to be a “benevolent dictator” you cannot possibly predict the same choices that millions of free people will choose when given the freedom to do what is in their own best interests.
If economics is boring to you, and you still think that socialism is good for the poor, here is a good read for the Joe Six-packs of the world:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/new-releases/books/4221/ref=zg_b_hnr_4221_1
Russ, yours is one of the best descriptions of why a free person would never accept socialism. No competition equals no advancement. Do any of you remember Ma Bell?
If one has no desire to improve, socialism works great to allocate shortages. Be very afraid of those voters that want government to provide for them. Free stuff come with bills.
I think we need a proof of concept to be done before we give up representative democracy.
Our climate agitators should move to China and agitate there. They when China has stopped building coal plants and started replacing them with wind turbines and solar panels I will climb on board the totalitarian bandwagon.