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A banner at March to End Fossil Fuels on September 17, 2023, reads “Youth didn’t vote for fossil fuels.”
The climate crisis demands a democracy that enforces the rights of people over money, establishes the rights of posterity and nature, and achieves a fair distribution of costs, risks, and benefits within and between generations.
The extreme heat and fires of 2023 and the climate chaos ahead are due to a political crisis that paralyzed the United States and other democracies for half a century. As a result, Earth is hotter now than in the past 125,000 years and probably much longer. We are also in the midst of a radical right-wing assault on democracy and effective government. The fossil fuel industry causes one and funds the other. What must we do?
Obviously, a lot, but the starting point is the election of 2024 and a choice of how we will make decisions about the human future, whether democratically or otherwise. A large fraction of the Republican Party has abandoned democracy in favor of autocracy. Worldwide, strong anti-democracy movements favor authoritarian governments because they are supposedly tougher and more efficient. But the record shows that authoritarian leaders are mostly demagogues who maintain power by corruption, fear, and hatred, not by solving complex long-term problems like climate change.
In contrast, the case for democracy is anchored, first in the belief that people have an unalienable right to say how they are governed, by whom, and to what ends and second in the awareness that no one can be trusted with unchecked power. The climate crisis adds a third: Everyone needs to be involved because it affects everyone. Without an engaged, competent, and supportive citizenry, no government can cope with the full effects of a destabilizing climate. In other words, we must count on the creativity, energy, and knowledge of the wider public. We have done it before. In World War II, for example, by voting for the kind of leadership necessary to defeat Fascism and by volunteering, sacrificing, creating, saving, and fighting.
The “Great Work” of the rising generation is to help build an inclusive movement that unites all those who prefer to drink clean water, breathe clean air, live in a stable climate, work in a fair and sustainable economy, and believe that they should have a say in creating a common future powered by sunlight.
Democracy, however, has always been a bet against the odds beginning long ago around tribal campfires with the idea that people deserve a say in decisions that affect them. Call that democracy 1.0. In Ancient Greece, democracy 2.0 was an experiment in public dialogue and reasoned arguments about the issues of the day. Modern democracy (3.0) began with the American Revolution culminating in the U.S. Constitution. It reflected the ideas of the European Enlightenment that aimed to disenthrall publics from superstition and arbitrary authority. In due course, the idea that “all men are created equal” led, however imperfectly, to an enlarged franchise including women, people of color, and Indigenous peoples.
Democracy 4.0, however, is an aspiration rendered more difficult by the flaws of 3.0 but more urgently necessary by global warming—a “timed test,” the clock set by the laws of physics. The challenge is to adapt governance, law, politics, and economies to the way the Earth works as a complex biophysical system. And, there’s the rub, first because earlier transitions were slow, taking centuries for ideas to take hold and second because we are not good at making systemic changes without causing havoc. Even so, democracy 4.0 cannot be just a slight improvement of our present democracy.
A decent future for humankind in a hotter and more crowded world will require once again enlarging our vision of democracy to include, among other things, enforcing the rights of people over money, establishing the rights of posterity and nature, and achieving a fair distribution of costs, risks, and benefits within and between generations.
Whatever the details, democracy, 4.0 is founded on the conviction that we all do better when we work together. Whatever the religion, the foundation of democracy 4.0 is moral: the belief that we are our brothers and sisters keepers and trustees for posterity. Whatever the language it will require a better balance between pronouns denoting “I,” “me,” and “mine,” and “we,” “ours,” and “us.” In different cultures, democracy 4.0 will take different forms. But everywhere it must help humankind escape from a cave of illusions about domination, oligarchy, technical fixes to profoundly human problems, and above all, from war and violence.
If this seems a bridge too far, democracy 2.0 and 3.0 once seemed beyond reach as well. No one can predict the years ahead, but we do know that ideas now spread quickly worldwide. What once took centuries now happens fast, and that cuts both ways. Democracy 4.0, in other words, is not foreordained and we should not underestimate the difficulties to disenthrall ourselves from modern superstitions and to overcome entrenched power.
The transition to an improved democracy requires, among other things, educating and mobilizing an ecologically competent and civically smarter citizenry. To that end, no student should graduate from any school, college, or university without understanding Earth systems science, the civic principles of democracy, and what these mean for their lives and careers.
The “Great Work” of the rising generation is to help build an inclusive movement that unites all those who prefer to drink clean water, breathe clean air, live in a stable climate, work in a fair and sustainable economy, and believe that they should have a say in creating a common future powered by sunlight. That movement will have many parts but each is about “who gets what, when, and how” which is to say it is fundamentally political. It is too soon to call democracy 4.0 inevitable, but despite the odds, there are days when it feels like it, even when time is so very short.
This piece is excerpted fromDemocracy in a Hotter Time (MIT Press, 2023).
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The extreme heat and fires of 2023 and the climate chaos ahead are due to a political crisis that paralyzed the United States and other democracies for half a century. As a result, Earth is hotter now than in the past 125,000 years and probably much longer. We are also in the midst of a radical right-wing assault on democracy and effective government. The fossil fuel industry causes one and funds the other. What must we do?
Obviously, a lot, but the starting point is the election of 2024 and a choice of how we will make decisions about the human future, whether democratically or otherwise. A large fraction of the Republican Party has abandoned democracy in favor of autocracy. Worldwide, strong anti-democracy movements favor authoritarian governments because they are supposedly tougher and more efficient. But the record shows that authoritarian leaders are mostly demagogues who maintain power by corruption, fear, and hatred, not by solving complex long-term problems like climate change.
In contrast, the case for democracy is anchored, first in the belief that people have an unalienable right to say how they are governed, by whom, and to what ends and second in the awareness that no one can be trusted with unchecked power. The climate crisis adds a third: Everyone needs to be involved because it affects everyone. Without an engaged, competent, and supportive citizenry, no government can cope with the full effects of a destabilizing climate. In other words, we must count on the creativity, energy, and knowledge of the wider public. We have done it before. In World War II, for example, by voting for the kind of leadership necessary to defeat Fascism and by volunteering, sacrificing, creating, saving, and fighting.
The “Great Work” of the rising generation is to help build an inclusive movement that unites all those who prefer to drink clean water, breathe clean air, live in a stable climate, work in a fair and sustainable economy, and believe that they should have a say in creating a common future powered by sunlight.
Democracy, however, has always been a bet against the odds beginning long ago around tribal campfires with the idea that people deserve a say in decisions that affect them. Call that democracy 1.0. In Ancient Greece, democracy 2.0 was an experiment in public dialogue and reasoned arguments about the issues of the day. Modern democracy (3.0) began with the American Revolution culminating in the U.S. Constitution. It reflected the ideas of the European Enlightenment that aimed to disenthrall publics from superstition and arbitrary authority. In due course, the idea that “all men are created equal” led, however imperfectly, to an enlarged franchise including women, people of color, and Indigenous peoples.
Democracy 4.0, however, is an aspiration rendered more difficult by the flaws of 3.0 but more urgently necessary by global warming—a “timed test,” the clock set by the laws of physics. The challenge is to adapt governance, law, politics, and economies to the way the Earth works as a complex biophysical system. And, there’s the rub, first because earlier transitions were slow, taking centuries for ideas to take hold and second because we are not good at making systemic changes without causing havoc. Even so, democracy 4.0 cannot be just a slight improvement of our present democracy.
A decent future for humankind in a hotter and more crowded world will require once again enlarging our vision of democracy to include, among other things, enforcing the rights of people over money, establishing the rights of posterity and nature, and achieving a fair distribution of costs, risks, and benefits within and between generations.
Whatever the details, democracy, 4.0 is founded on the conviction that we all do better when we work together. Whatever the religion, the foundation of democracy 4.0 is moral: the belief that we are our brothers and sisters keepers and trustees for posterity. Whatever the language it will require a better balance between pronouns denoting “I,” “me,” and “mine,” and “we,” “ours,” and “us.” In different cultures, democracy 4.0 will take different forms. But everywhere it must help humankind escape from a cave of illusions about domination, oligarchy, technical fixes to profoundly human problems, and above all, from war and violence.
If this seems a bridge too far, democracy 2.0 and 3.0 once seemed beyond reach as well. No one can predict the years ahead, but we do know that ideas now spread quickly worldwide. What once took centuries now happens fast, and that cuts both ways. Democracy 4.0, in other words, is not foreordained and we should not underestimate the difficulties to disenthrall ourselves from modern superstitions and to overcome entrenched power.
The transition to an improved democracy requires, among other things, educating and mobilizing an ecologically competent and civically smarter citizenry. To that end, no student should graduate from any school, college, or university without understanding Earth systems science, the civic principles of democracy, and what these mean for their lives and careers.
The “Great Work” of the rising generation is to help build an inclusive movement that unites all those who prefer to drink clean water, breathe clean air, live in a stable climate, work in a fair and sustainable economy, and believe that they should have a say in creating a common future powered by sunlight. That movement will have many parts but each is about “who gets what, when, and how” which is to say it is fundamentally political. It is too soon to call democracy 4.0 inevitable, but despite the odds, there are days when it feels like it, even when time is so very short.
This piece is excerpted fromDemocracy in a Hotter Time (MIT Press, 2023).
The extreme heat and fires of 2023 and the climate chaos ahead are due to a political crisis that paralyzed the United States and other democracies for half a century. As a result, Earth is hotter now than in the past 125,000 years and probably much longer. We are also in the midst of a radical right-wing assault on democracy and effective government. The fossil fuel industry causes one and funds the other. What must we do?
Obviously, a lot, but the starting point is the election of 2024 and a choice of how we will make decisions about the human future, whether democratically or otherwise. A large fraction of the Republican Party has abandoned democracy in favor of autocracy. Worldwide, strong anti-democracy movements favor authoritarian governments because they are supposedly tougher and more efficient. But the record shows that authoritarian leaders are mostly demagogues who maintain power by corruption, fear, and hatred, not by solving complex long-term problems like climate change.
In contrast, the case for democracy is anchored, first in the belief that people have an unalienable right to say how they are governed, by whom, and to what ends and second in the awareness that no one can be trusted with unchecked power. The climate crisis adds a third: Everyone needs to be involved because it affects everyone. Without an engaged, competent, and supportive citizenry, no government can cope with the full effects of a destabilizing climate. In other words, we must count on the creativity, energy, and knowledge of the wider public. We have done it before. In World War II, for example, by voting for the kind of leadership necessary to defeat Fascism and by volunteering, sacrificing, creating, saving, and fighting.
The “Great Work” of the rising generation is to help build an inclusive movement that unites all those who prefer to drink clean water, breathe clean air, live in a stable climate, work in a fair and sustainable economy, and believe that they should have a say in creating a common future powered by sunlight.
Democracy, however, has always been a bet against the odds beginning long ago around tribal campfires with the idea that people deserve a say in decisions that affect them. Call that democracy 1.0. In Ancient Greece, democracy 2.0 was an experiment in public dialogue and reasoned arguments about the issues of the day. Modern democracy (3.0) began with the American Revolution culminating in the U.S. Constitution. It reflected the ideas of the European Enlightenment that aimed to disenthrall publics from superstition and arbitrary authority. In due course, the idea that “all men are created equal” led, however imperfectly, to an enlarged franchise including women, people of color, and Indigenous peoples.
Democracy 4.0, however, is an aspiration rendered more difficult by the flaws of 3.0 but more urgently necessary by global warming—a “timed test,” the clock set by the laws of physics. The challenge is to adapt governance, law, politics, and economies to the way the Earth works as a complex biophysical system. And, there’s the rub, first because earlier transitions were slow, taking centuries for ideas to take hold and second because we are not good at making systemic changes without causing havoc. Even so, democracy 4.0 cannot be just a slight improvement of our present democracy.
A decent future for humankind in a hotter and more crowded world will require once again enlarging our vision of democracy to include, among other things, enforcing the rights of people over money, establishing the rights of posterity and nature, and achieving a fair distribution of costs, risks, and benefits within and between generations.
Whatever the details, democracy, 4.0 is founded on the conviction that we all do better when we work together. Whatever the religion, the foundation of democracy 4.0 is moral: the belief that we are our brothers and sisters keepers and trustees for posterity. Whatever the language it will require a better balance between pronouns denoting “I,” “me,” and “mine,” and “we,” “ours,” and “us.” In different cultures, democracy 4.0 will take different forms. But everywhere it must help humankind escape from a cave of illusions about domination, oligarchy, technical fixes to profoundly human problems, and above all, from war and violence.
If this seems a bridge too far, democracy 2.0 and 3.0 once seemed beyond reach as well. No one can predict the years ahead, but we do know that ideas now spread quickly worldwide. What once took centuries now happens fast, and that cuts both ways. Democracy 4.0, in other words, is not foreordained and we should not underestimate the difficulties to disenthrall ourselves from modern superstitions and to overcome entrenched power.
The transition to an improved democracy requires, among other things, educating and mobilizing an ecologically competent and civically smarter citizenry. To that end, no student should graduate from any school, college, or university without understanding Earth systems science, the civic principles of democracy, and what these mean for their lives and careers.
The “Great Work” of the rising generation is to help build an inclusive movement that unites all those who prefer to drink clean water, breathe clean air, live in a stable climate, work in a fair and sustainable economy, and believe that they should have a say in creating a common future powered by sunlight. That movement will have many parts but each is about “who gets what, when, and how” which is to say it is fundamentally political. It is too soon to call democracy 4.0 inevitable, but despite the odds, there are days when it feels like it, even when time is so very short.
This piece is excerpted fromDemocracy in a Hotter Time (MIT Press, 2023).
