Welcome to zero. I am asha this week dictators, democrats, and disasters. The time we have to take action on climate change is in short supply. Emissions of greenhouse gases need to peak within the next three years. If we're to stay off, we have until with a massive warning. It is now or never, and the lack of time
raises the question our democracies up to the challenge. Do we have the time to let the natural course of consensus building and debate play out, or should governments around the world suspend the normal course of democracy in favor of climate action? Is an eco authoritarian model the way to go. In my travels to China, for all the country's many problems, it was stunning to see how much
progress has made on green technologies. It has a plan to reach zero emissions within decades, and the country typically delivers on its promises. That's made many in the environmental movement question whether more of us should be taking the authoritarian route to zero. I wanted to put these questions to Dan Fiorina, the author of Canned Democracy Handled Climate Change,
one of my favorite books on the subject. He's also the director for the Center for Environmental Policy at American University. Dan comes down strongly in favor of democracy, but readily admits that no government is doing enough to meet the challenges of climate change, and he worries that if left unchecked, democracies themselves may fall victim to the stresses and strains caused by our warming planet. A final note before we begin.
We open our conversation talking about the scientist James Lovelock, who was still alive at the time of recording, which sadly passed away at the age of one hundred and three. Dan Fiorino, Welcome to Zero. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. You open your book with a quote from the scientist James Lovelock, the inventor of the gaia hypothesis, and it reads, even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put
on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change might be an issue as serious as war, and it may be necessary to put democracy on hold.
Do you agree? No, I don't agree. And my point in writing that book was that democracy has many many advantages, and we don't necessarily know that suspending democratic institutions and processes would improve our ability to deal with the causes and the impacts of climate change, And so I thought it was important to address statements like that climate change
is obviously a very substantial challenge to modern governments. But I don't share the view that we need to suspend democratic norms, institutions, and processes to be able to deal with it. And what was it about this quote from James Lovelock that made you want to open your book with it. Well, the first reason is that it is, to me a very stark statement of the lack of confidence in democratic systems to be able to deal with
a fundamental challenge like climate change. The second reason I cited that quotation is that James Lovelock is a leading environmentalist, a leading scientist, and someone who obviously cares and has made many, many contributions to our thinking and our ability to deal with environmental issues. So I thought the quote made the point very effectively, a point which I then set out to refute. Those were the reasons that I opened with that quote. I want you to entertain the
opposite view for a moment. Why are people advocating for it? Well, the argument is that more top down centralized governments relatively more authoritarian systems, that they are able to overcome entrenched interests, they are able to force hard choices on populations that may not appreciate the gravity or the complexity of the climate challenge, and that only by forcing through these tough
decisions can the necessary changes be made. That's a very dangerous set of assumptions and frankly not really borne out by experience or history. Are the research tells us that authoritarian systems aren't necessarily better and maybe even be less effective in dealing with the causes of climate change. Let's
walk through those limitations. You know, what do you see as the main flaws in the argument in favor of a non democratic approach to actling climate I think the main flaws are, first of all, that highly centralized, non democratic government and leadership would be more inclined to pursue both the mitigation and adaptation challenges of climate change. There's
really not a great deal of evidence. People often point to China, which has made some progress in dealing with climate change, although to some degree, I think a lot of that was motivated by a desire to reduce levels of harmful air pollution. So I'm not saying that authoritarian
governments are necessarily ineffective. But I think we have very little evidence that non democratic systems and leaders can be any more effective, and in fact, I think a lot of experience and research tells us they're probably less effective. If that's the case, let's then turn to democracies and look at what the benefits of a democratic approach to
tackling climate change really are well. The overall argument is that democratic systs are more adaptable, they are less corrupt, and actually lower levels of corruption in democratic societies may be an important cause of their relative ability to deal with not only climate issues but a range of environmental, economic, and social issues. Democracies achieve better levels of economic growth, they provide better benefits for their citizens, obviously much better
record on rights and individual freedoms. The argument, though, against democratic systems is that they're slow to change that. For example, when you have an established fossil fuel industry, that's very hard in a democratic system to overcome those kinds of entrenched interests, and the record shows that indeed that is
very difficult. Whether it's United States or Canada or Australia which relies very heavily on coal x sports that is a major challenge, and generally societies that have not historically relied on fossil fuels tend to have a better record at dealing with the cause of climate change. So I think the argument is that democratic systems can overcome those
entrenched interests. They can't convince people that changes in lifestyle and energy systems and food systems and so on are needed, and thus have a much more difficult time making the required changes. And to some extent, the corruption point is also that democracies are able to hold governments to account. Typically, if you have a representative system and you have a way to make your voicehood, if you see corruption, you'd
see people vote the regime out of vote the government outright. Yeah, I think that identifies the benefits of democratic systems is that there is a more open flow of information, There are checks on the exercise of political power. You have a free press that can actively highlight issues and problems.
So I think that generally accounts for the lower levels of corruption democratic societies, And we certainly have lots of evidence that where there are high levels of corruption that in general, government policy is going to be far less effective. So I think that corruption aspect is a very important part of the superiority of democratic regimes in dealing with a range of complex issues, and it not only climate
change but others as well. So I'm going to push you back a little bit here, okay, Because by twenty twenty, not a single democracy had sufficiently lowered their emissions to meet the targets set in the Paris Agreement. And if we take that data point, one can conclude the democracies have so far largely failed in really dealing with climate change. So you know, why don't democracy seem to be able
to take the requisite action? Yeah, well, I would say no government has really succeeded in taking the requisite action. Climate change really calls for some very transformational changes, and these are very difficult to achieve in any system. So yes, it is fair to say no nation has really stepped up to meeting the climate challenge. In general, the European Union, I would say, is better than many other countries, certainly better than the United States in terms of meeting the
climate challenge. The United Kingdom actually has been making some substantial progress, but no country is changing energy systems and some of these other systems we've talked about at the pace that is needed to get us where we need to be by mid centuries. No government is currently acting fast enough on climate change, but the top performers still
tend to be democracies. The Climate Change Performance Index ranks countries on how well they're tackling emissions, and out of the top thirty countries on that list, the vast majority are democracies. Denmark is fourth, Sweden fifth, the UK seventh. No countries filled the top three position on the list, symbolizing the lack of progress. There are also important democracies that feature much further down that list, some of the
world's biggest emitters. Out of the sixty four countries ranked, the US ranks fifty five, Australia fifty nine, and Canada sixty one. China is placed above all of them at thirty eight. So I wanted to put a very specific question to Dan based on this data, is the case against democracies based on the actions of democracies as a whole or the failures of a conspicuous few. Many of the critics of the ability of democracies to deal with
climate change point to the United States. Certainly their fair criticisms to be made there, Australia, Canada, which is perhaps moving in a more progressive direction. I think it is fair to say that there are certain outliers in terms
of climate performance. We look at the European Union, particularly the northern European countries, or even France, which for reasons really unrelated to climate change, invested heavily in nuclear electricity generation in nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties and so on, we see a lot more progress. So I think that is an excellent point that certain democracies have not done well, and they tend to fuel this perception that democracies are
incapable of meeting the climate challenge. One of the things that anchors most people's attraction to authoritarianism is what China has done, because China has become this leader in green technology. Yes, it is the biggest amateur today, but its emissions are plateaued, and it has this ability to be able to build solar and wind and batteries at scales that no other
country has been able to. Is the pro authoritarian argument mostly coming from people looking at China, because if you look at other authoritarian regimes, it's very hard to make the case for them. It is harder to make the
case with other authoritarian regimes. Certainly in the Chinese system, once the regime decides to move in a certain direction, that is more likely to happen than in democracies, where you need to build consensus and build agreement and work through institutions and deliver change in those kinds of ways. I think China is a mixed case. Certainly, we've seen some cleaning up of their energy system, some reductions in
emissions of various kinds. The catches with such a large population and with their very high economic growth rates that there's just a tremendous demand for energy, and they still rely very heavily on coal. So I think it's still early. The results aren't quite in on where China will be in the longer term. But certainly I agree with your assessment that the Chinese experience and the potential for change in China has fueled a lot of the criticisms of
democratic systems. Right. There's also this middle ground between democracies and authoritarian regimes. Emerging democracies such as Bolivia, Malaysia, and Zambia are not yet considered full democracies right, but they are moving that direction. Use site studies in the book that show established democracies are the best at tackling emissions. Then come authoritarian regimes, and then these emerging democracies, they are the least effective when it comes to dealing with
climate change. If climate is the overwriting concern, which you argue it is, then should we let emerging democracies fall back into authoritarianism or do we have the time to let them become mature democracies and then act on climate change. You're citing some research that concludes that transitional democracies Latin America or Eastern Europe, we'd have many examples, are still sort of working to establish effective governments, to build the right sort of political cultures to be able to deal
with complicated issues. I don't necessarily think that authoritarian systems are going to be better than those transitional democracies, although obviously that's a very mixed bag. And bear in mind that climate change is only one of many many issues facing governments in the modern world. It is an overriding issue, to be sure, but health and safety and economic security and all those kinds of issues are things that governments
have to deal with. So I think again, it would be a very risky proposition to say that, well, we should let them go evolve toward authoritarianism because that'll make them better at dealing with climate change. A commitment to democracy is the best way to deal with issues like climate change. And one factor is that the ocracies tend
to not go to war with each other. And if there's anything that's going to get in the way of dealing with climate action, its instability and conflict around the world. Here's the number one flaw in the pro authoritarian argument,
that the assume to be a benign dictator. Yes, I think if you read some of the work critical of democracies, this assumption that I call in the book ecological autocracy, that ecological autocrats will emerge and they will place concern over the environment and natural resources and climate mitigation and climate adaptation, that they will put those at the top of the agenda. And we really don't have any actual
evidence of that. So I think there's this assumption of a sort of ideal authoritarian system that in fact doesn't really exist. Generally, autheraitarian systems have been much harder on the environment then democratic systems, so I think that is a bit of a myth. The title of Dan's book, Can Democracy Handle Climate change can be interpreted in two ways. Our democracy is able to deliver action on climate change? And will democracy survive the impacts of a warming world
after the break? I asked Dan which he's more concerned with. I want to come back to the title of your book, which is called Can Democracy Handle Climate Change? The two sides to the word handle. One is active and one is reactive. Are you more concerned with the farmer or the latter, that democracies will fail to deal with climate change actively, or that democracies will fail as a victim to climate change. I think I'm concerned about both, but
I'm far more concerned about the first. Democracies tend to react when there is an imminent threat. We may see with sea level rise, with extreme heat, all these impacts of climate change, Governments will have to respond. What I worry about is that by the time we respond to the immediate threats, much of the damage will already be done.
That's the big challenge to me of climate change is that it requires us to think in longer time frames, and governments and societies generally are not all that good thinking in longer time frames. We tend to respond to short term threats, so yes, I'm much more concerned about our ability to anticipate and plan and take measures to avoid longer term problems. Would it be fair to say that the longer we wait to act on climate change, the more likely we are to see democracy has become
destabilized because of climate impacts. I think that is a concern, certainly, something that I and many other people working at environmental issues are concerned about. So one side of the picture is how effectively governments anticipate and plan for and take action to mitigate the causes of climate change. The other part of the question is what effects will the impacts of a changing climate have on democratic systems. This is an area where I think we all should be very worried.
If you look at some of the likely impacts, we could have climate refugees, We could have lots of movement of populations from some areas to other areas. Yeah, let me throw some numbers at you. Yeah. Since two thousand and eight, an average of twenty one point five million people per year have been forcibly displaced by weather related events. By some estimates, that number is likely to rise to
one point two billion by twenty fifty. Cumulatively, that is a stunning increase, and that can have all sorts of downstream impacts when food on conflicts on changing the politics of the countries that they end up in, and there will be economic decline. I mean that kind of threat which for a long time people were thinking was alarmism. People can now start to see that that might become real. Yes,
that absolutely as a worry. So as we have movement of populations, whether it's in European Union or the southern border of the United States, that has a couple of effects. One, it can be destabilizing both in the places where people are trying to leave and places where they're they're going,
And instability always makes concentrated, deliberate policy change difficult. Also, I'm concerned about the impact that this could have on sort of fueling interest and demands for right wing populist governments, which, for reasons I've mentioned, tend to be not good, if not actively hostile to climate mitigation to effective government in general.
A very serious long term concern is that conflict and instability, all these different kinds of impacts of climate change can actually undermine the effectiveness of democratic systems and governments in general to deal with complex issues like climate change, and so what do we need to do then to strengthen democracies as they exist right now against the potential disruption
that is coming. It's not just about cutting emissions, is it. Well, we certainly need to cut emissions, and we need to actually prepare for what is needed to adapt to climate change. We have to do more than just respond when the problems become apparent. We have to build in resilience. One of my students use the term we have to climate proof society. We can work on building better democracies that
are more responsive. We can work on communicating to people what this problem is and why it is so important. We can frame issues in a way so that climate change is one way of looking at it, but another way of looking at this is, well, here's an opportunity for clean energy systems, where there is less air pollution, where there's technology innovation, and opportunities for exporting products around
the world. We know that renewable energy and energy efficiency generate more employment, more jobs per unit of investment, so we to make that case. So I think we have to really persuade people that there are a number of reasons, not only the climate reason to make these kinds of transitions, and then we need to build more accountable, more effective governments that are able to make the necessary decisions and
carry out these kinds of changes. And that's not going to be easy to do, but you know, that's what we ultimately have to do. And it's certainly something that the IPCC reports, if you read them towards the end,
that's what they're saying. Many of the IPCC reports, after they've laid out the impact and after they've laid out what are the mitigation steps that we need to take, they go into this place where they are creating essentially a society that would be more democratic, more free, and more enabling of the human potential, because all those things
also help fight climate change. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, climate change is a relatively new and novel challenge, but throughout history, we wanted good, effective governments that represent people's wishes, that guarantee human rights, that maximize opportunities for people. So I've always thought that democratic systems were the best way to do that. So it's not just climate change, it is
generally it's just a better way of having government. There's the famous Winston Churchill quote where he says that democracy is the worst form of government pause except for all the others that have been tried from time to time, and I think that still holds true. Climate change is going to place a huge strain on democracies around the world,
but this strain won't be felt by democracies alone. Authoritarian governments will also feel the destabilizing effects of things like mass migration, more extreme weather events, shortages of food, and will face similar pressures to respond. So I asked Dan about this, what's going to happen to authoritarian regimes as they face up to the realities of climate change. It
could be destabilizing in those countries as well. First of all, we certainly i'd hope that authoritarian governments and what are called hybrid systems that share many characteristics of authoritarian governments, if they're going to be able to deal with the causes and the impacts of climate change. Because about half of global emissions come from those countries, these factors could
be destabilizing in those countries as well. And you know, whether that leads to them moving more toward democratic transitions or sort of pushes them deeper into authoritarianism is an open question and will probably vary a lot depending on the country and the part of the world. You know, I would say whatever the form of government, political and economic instability undermines the capacity to deal with complex policy
problems like climate change. Right, just going back to the point that you were making about authoritarian regimes, if we take the example of the Arab Spring, partly cause because of climate change and the rising food prices, you know, people who are hungry will revolt whether it's a democracy or an authority in regime. And if you look at what's happened since the Arab Spring, now it's been more than a decade, it hasn't really gone the way of democracies. Yeah,
I think that was a disappointment. I just read something recently about Tunisia, where a lot of the movement certainly associated with the Arab Spring occurred and now it's not working that well. And rising food prices, that's another great example of sort of instability that could come from a change in climate. And it's just it's so hard to predict generally, but the trend in recent years has been sort of moving away from democracy, and I think that's
a concern for many of us. And just I mean, when I look at what the situation in the world today is with Russia attacking Ukraine and Europe really struggling with its gas supplies that were coming from Russia. We could have very easy seen a backslide on the European climate agenda. And certainly there's been some increase in coal in the short term, and there's some approval of gas projects.
But largely, if we look at the democratic process itself, the EU has been going forward with all its major climate targets, and it is now in this process putting through legislation while these energy crises and the inflation and economic crisis is also playing out. So that speaks very highly of what democracies can do if there is enough ways in which representation of what people want filters up
to the people in power. I agree. I think certainly the invasion of Ukraine has created a number of challenges. I think in general, the European Union has maintained a commitment to clean energy, to wind and solar energy efficiency, and to electrifying transportation and doing than many other things that are required. Certainly it reinforces the logic and certainly the case for a transition to clean energy, because they really need to get off this dependence on Russian gas.
In the short term. It's a big challenge in countries like Germany, but part of the problem there is that there they shut down in their nuclear industry or they're still wrapping that up, and they've had to increase reliance on coal, which has had climate as well as public health implications. So these issues are very difficult, but I think in the EU that you know, we're seeing a commitment, and in many ways this whole experience reinforces the commitment
to getting off fossil fuels. Thanks for joining, Dan. That was a fantastic conversation. Well great, I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me. The temptation to take the authoritarian route is not new, but as we face up to challenges that seem too big to handle, that temptation grows. And as the conversation with Dan showed, the temptation isn't worth falling for the countries that are taking the most effective action on climate change, as messy as they may be
our democracies. Thanks for listening to Zero. If you like the show, please rate, review, and subscribe. If you've got a suggestion for a guest or topic, or something you want us to look into get in touch at Zero Pod at Bloomberg dot Net. Zero's producer is Oscar Boyd and senior producer is Christine driscoll. Our theme music is by Wonderly many people help make the show a success. Each week, I'll tell you about one of them this week.
Thanks to Chewan Wagner, Bloombergreen's editor in London, an American who's raised the bar for British small talk, I am Ashatati back next week