Our democracies must change to meet the climate crisis

December 15, 2023

Chandan Nair sets out with exquisite clarity the fundamental weakness that the developed world faces in our fight against our changing climate. Democracies with regular election cycles focus politicians on populist policies and short-term fixes. Politicians will not court unpopularity through imposing hardship on their electors; click-bait-hungry media exacerbate this problem. As Chandan Nair says: … climate change and other existential threats make for good slogans, but weak manifestoes. Our world is close to a tipping points brink. If humanity is to survive we need effective solutions urgently to transition our world to a more sustainable basis. Our democracies have so far failed to address our changing climate effectively. They must reform, or evolve, to meet this challenge now. If democracy cannot rise to deliver the necessary solutions people will, in extremis, turn to authoritarian regimes of one sort or another simply to survive. Climate change will be an existential threat to democracy before it is to humanity.