Democracy inept in the face of climate change

WE TAKE the Churchillian description of democracy as the worst system of government except all the others as a given, almost unimaginable to question. But it is likely to face severe challenge in the longer term.

What if, one might ask, the richest democracy in the world, the United States; the highest populated democracy, India; and the democracy that emits the most carbon per head, Australia, prove so inept that they do nothing or not enough to cut the carbon emissions that threaten the optimum prosperity of the planet?

What if, one might ask, that those very democracies continue with their willy nilly approach to population that increases their carbon footprint?

It is a major test for democracy. It is all very well saying we have freedom of speech and the right to vote, but what if those things prove failures in the face of a force that threatens our present very pleasant existence?

As a democrat optimist at heart, this is quite a confronting question. I hope that government by the people proves best, but can we make this assumption? Where would you like to be in 25 years’ time? On a planet six degrees hotter, with more extreme weather events, lower crop yields, and less prosperity, but with a right to protest about it and the freedom to vote in another lot of representatives to do nothing about it? Or would you prefer to be on a planet where freedom was curtailed, but so have carbon emissions and increases in population so there were fewer cataclysmic weather events and more secure food, water and energy supplies?

Of course, those of us fortunate enough to live in democratic societies would prefer the other option: full freedom and the rule of law coupled with policies that would do something about the climate-change threat.

Alas, that option is looking less likely as Tea Party antics in the US and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s reborn again and again climate-change denials in Australia attest.

Abbott’s climate change denial this week was almost criminally irresponsible.

He said, “I don’t think we can say that the science is settled here . . . whether carbon dioxide is quite the environmental villain that some people make it out to be.”

The statement gives people false hope. If the Leader of the Opposition says we don’t have to worry, then why worry.

Now, maybe we can take some comfort from the fact that this was not a “scripted remark”. It was part of a Q and A in the town-hall style meeting.

Remember in May last year Abbott telling Kerry O’Brien on The 7.30 Report, “Politicians are going to be judged on everything they say, but sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark. Which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth [are] those carefully prepared, scripted remarks. . . . . Most of us know, when we’re talking to people, when we’re listening to people, I think we know when we can put absolute weight on what’s being said and when it’s just the give and take of standard conversation.”

So Abbott’s climate-change denial was in “the give and take of standard conversation” whereas his official statements of policy before the “give and take” conversation are scripted as are the official policy reiterations after the “give-and-take” conversation. According to Abbott, the statement that should be treated as “the gospel truth” is the scripted remark, not the remark in the give and take of standard conversation.

I find that unconvincing. Indeed, ordinary human experience tells us the opposite — that the truth of a speaker’s position is more likely to be found in the ordinary give and take of standard conversation than in “prepared, scripted” remarks.

The prepared, scripted remarks are surely more likely to be tailored and the unscripted come from the heart?

But that is ordinary human experience. Maybe political experience is different and that we should expect politicians’ unscripted remarks to be twisted for the audience they happen to be addressing at the time.

Let’s face it, we don’t know and cannot tell what Tony Abbott really thinks about climate change. But we do know this much: he is either lazy and ignorant (that, is he has not bothered to get across the science) or a fool (not intelligent enough to understand the science even if he read it) or an occasional liar (either on the occasion he denies the science or on the occasion he affirms it).

If we are to believe the scripted version that climate change is real and man-made, let’s have a debate about what will be the most cost-effective way of reducing emissions – a test of the cost and workability of what the Opposition proposes to do – not just slogans like “great big tax”.

I don’t want to pick especially on Abbott here. His behaviour is just an example of some fundamental flaws in democracy these days: politicians who feel they have to say things that they think are what their audience wants to hear; and politicians who in the words of for Labor Minister Graham Richardson are prepared to do whatever it takes to attain and/or retain office.

In our democracies, science, a measured concern for the truth, and a desire to deal with problems in the national interest are being replaced by point-scoring and opposition for opposition’s sake.

Similar things are happening with Tea Party politicians in the US. Democracies, particularly the US, seem to be less and less capable of dealing with big issues in their people’s best interest: climate change; military spending and adventurism; health care; the public debt; the national debt and so on.

Democracy is wasted on the masses. You have to wonder what came first the unscrupulous politician or the ignorant and stupid voter.

We in the democracies have got to refuse to put up with populism, destructive oppositionism and crass simplification of complex questions. Otherwise we will wake up to find that less palatable forms of government prove more capable of dealing with the complex issues of our time. Alas, the more autocratic China seems to be dealing with these questions more effectively and more determinedly.

History has many examples of democratic forms of government becoming incapable or even paralysed and giving way to more autocratic forms of government – architects of their own downfall.

In the face of recent performance we cannot merrily assume the constant march of democracy and a concomitant spread of better government, more’ the pity
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times on 19 March 2011.