14 September 2019 | New Scientist | 23L
AST week, I found myself
participating in a pro-
democracy demonstration:
not in Hong Kong or some other
distant authoritarian state, but
in the heart of my own city,
London. I am no stranger to
protest marches, but I never
expected to have to take to the
streets to defend something as
fundamental to British life as
parliamentary democracy.
That was before prime minister
Boris Johnson announced his
intention to suspend parliament
for five weeks in order to push
through a no-deal Brexit.
Yes, the B-word. I didn’t really
want to write about Brexit. This
is a column about environmental
issues. But bear with me, because
I believe the current state of UK
politics tells us something about
environmental battles to come.
The “stop the coup” protests –
and counter-protests – outside the
Palace of Westminster in the past
weeks weren’t widely reported
as pro-democracy rallies, but I
think that is fundamentally what
they are. The idea of proroguing
parliament to secure Brexit
is, to many, including myself,
profoundly undemocratic – not to
mention darkly ironic, given one
oft-cited reason for Brexit, for the
UK to restore full parliamentary
sovereignty and take back
democratic control of its affairs.
I do understand that there is
another way of looking at it. In the
2016 referendum, the majority of
voters supported the UK leaving
the EU, but three years and a lot of
parliamentary wrangling later, the
UK is still in it. If parliament has to
be suspended to deliver the will of
the people, then so be it: the direct
democracy of the referendum
trumps the representative
democracy of parliament.
There are counterarguments to
the counterarguments, of course,but wherever you stand on
the Brexit issue, the same basic,
broader question applies. In a
democracy, is it ever legitimate
to decide that an objective is of
such profound importance that
established political structures or
constitutional procedures can be
swept aside to achieve it?
Contemplating the Brexit
struggle, I was reminded of
conversations I had with scientists
and policy-makers after the
Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change published its 2018
report about the radical and rapid
changes required to stop warming
from exceeding 1.5°C. Some openlyquestioned whether the scale
of the challenge was compatible
with democracy.
You can see why they worry.
Environmental action is political.
The status quo is dragging us to
disaster and we face difficult
choices about how we run the
economy, obtain energy and
food, move ourselves around and
build infrastructure. Freedoms we
take for granted will have to be
constrained. There will be losers.
Will it really be possible to
persuade enough people to make
the necessary sacrifices to avert
environmental disaster? Or will
the majority kick the can down
the road and vote for short-termself-interest? At this point, I
don’t think these are hypothetical
questions. Every election from
now on, in every jurisdiction, is
a test of democracy’s ability to
avert climate disaster. Its track
record so far isn’t encouraging.
At some point, then,
environmentalists may have to
ask themselves a very difficult
question: which is more
important, saving the planet or
saving democracy? As we have
seen with Brexit, I think we will
find that many people who are
otherwise impeccable democrats
will decide ditching democracy is
the lesser of two evils. Some may
look with envy to authoritarian
regimes such as China, which
has stated its aim to build an
“ecological civilisation” and,
politically, looks more capable
of doing so than any democracy.
At this point, it helps to bring
in a bit of cognitive science. For
many people in the UK, Brexit
appears to have become what is
called a “sacred value”: something
so central to their identity and
worldview that it trumps all else.
As the name implies, such values
are often religious, but not always.
Nationalism, freedom and
democracy are sacred for
some people, too.
Environmentalism can also be
a sacred value. When the climate
crisis bites harder, we will face a
similar reckoning. Now I’m on the
side of parliamentary democracy,
but when the shit truly hits the
fan, I’m not so sure that I would
take to the streets to defend it.
Is there a way to reconcile the
two? When I asked Caroline Lucas,
the UK’s only Green party MP,
whether climate action was
compatible with democracy,
she said yes – but only if we build
a mass movement to persuade
politicians to act. Time to put
REUTERS/HENRY NICHOLLS my marching boots back on. ❚This column appears
monthly. Up next week:
Annalee Newitz
“ Which is more
important, saving
the planet or saving
democracy?”The trouble with democracy The apparently never-ending
Brexit crisis may hold some lessons for how we tackle
climate change, writes Graham LawtonNo planet B
What I’m reading
Ian McEwan’s novel,
Machines Like Me, an
alternative history of AI
if Alan Turing had lived
What I’m watching
The new series of Only
Connect has started. In
my house, it is known as
The Impossible Quiz
What I’m working on
An article about
humanity’s first great
maritime voyage,
50,000 years ago
Graham’s week
Graham Lawton is a staff
writer at New Scientist and
author of The Origin of (Almost)
Everything. You can follow him
@grahamlawton
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