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Climate policy: Democracy is not an inconvenience

September 2015
Nature 525(7570):449-450

DOI:10.1038/525449a

Authors:

Nico Stehr

Zeppelin University

Climate scientists are tiring of governance that does not lead to action.

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completely to CO

. Materials research on

proton and oxygen ion conductors in the

past decade shows that such fuel cells are

possible.

For intermediate-temperature hybrid

fuel cells to become a reality, researchers

need to create solid electrolytes with high

conductivity, and find electrode materials

that have high activity and stability and

that react with methane without form-

ing coke (solid carbon). These devices

must use less platinum catalyst and more

impure fuel than low-temperature poly-

mer cells; make do with cheaper seals and

connectors; and last longer than higher-

temperature solid-oxide fuel cells.

US researchers have made a start. I

launched the Reliable Electricity Based on

Electrochemical Systems (REBELS) pro-

gramme at ARPA-E with $33million in

funding in June 2014. It is starting to bear

fruit10. Efforts elsewhere, particularly in

Europe and Japan, are addressing hydro-

gen generation and GTL separately but

could also benefit from hybrid fuel cells.

Researchers should prove the viability of

intermediate-temperature fuel cells with

these extra functions by demonstrating

high power density and a lifetime of ten

years, compared with current cell lifetimes

of less than five. Cost savings must be vali-

dated through rigorous techno-economic

modelling. Advances will then need to be

scaled up from individual cells to kilowatt-

scale systems, which will take 5–10 years.

Regulators, utility companies, technol-

ogists and users must define an appropri-

ate mix of technologies and incentives to

maintain the stability of the electricity

grid in the coming decades. Hybrid fuel

cells must be part of that conversation. ■

John P. Lemmon is a programme director

at the US Department of Energy Advanced

Research Projects Agency–Energy

(ARPA-E), Washington DC, USA.

e-mail: john.lemmon@hq.doe.gov

1. Schröder, C. Der Spiegel ‘Energy Revolution

Hiccups: Grid Instability Has Industry

Scrambling for Solutions’ (16 August 2012).

2. US Energy Information Administration.

Modeling Distributed Generation in the

Building Sectors (EIA, 2013).

3. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Assessment of Demand Response and

Advanced Metering (2012).

4. Lew, D. et al. The Western Wind and Solar

Integration Study Phase 2 (US Natl Renewable

Energy Lab., 2013).

5. Weiss, J. & Tsuchida, B. Integrating Renewable

Energy into the Electricity Grid (Brattle Group,

2015).

6. Chartouni, D., Kuriyama, N., Kiyobayahsi, T. &

Chen, J. Int. J. Hydrogen Energy 27, 945–952

(2002).

7. Wang, C., Appleby, A. J., Cocke, D. L.

J. Electrochem. Soc. 151, A260–A264 (2004).

8. Van Overmeere, Q., Kerman, K. & Ramanathan,

S. Nano Lett. 12, 3756–3760 (2012).

9. Jacobs, T. J. Pet. Technol. 65, 4135 (2013).

10. Duan, C. et al. Science http://dx.doi.org/

10.1126/science.aab3987 (2015).

Democracy is not

an inconvenience

Climate scientists are tiring of governance that does not

lead to action. But democracy must not be weakened in

the fight against global warming, warns Nico Stehr.

There are many threats to democracy

in the modern era. Not least is the

risk posed by the widespread public

feeling that politicians are not listening.

Such discontent can be seen in the politi-

cal far right: the Tea Party movement in the

United States, the UK Independence Party,

the Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the

Islamization of the West) demonstrators in

Germany, and the National Front in France.

More surprisingly, a similar impatience

with the political elite is now also present

in the scientific community. Researchers

are increasingly concerned that no one is

listening to their diagnosis of the dangers

of human-induced climate change and

its long-lasting consequences, despite the

robust scientific consensus. As govern-

ments continue to fail to take appropriate

political action, democracy begins to look

to some like an inconvenient form of gov-

ernance. There is a tendency to want to take

decisions out of the hands of politicians

and the public, and, given the ‘exceptional

circumstances’, put the decisions into the

hands of scientists themselves.

This scientific disenchantment with

democracy has slipped under the radar

of many social scientists and commen-

tators. Attention is urgently needed:

24 SEPTEMBER 2015 | VOL 525 | NATURE | 449

COMMENT

ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID PARKINS

the solution to the intractable ‘wicked

problem’ of global warming is to enhance

democracy, not jettison it.

VOICES OF DISCONTENT

Democratic nations seem to have failed

us in the climate arena so far. The past

decade’s climate summits in Copenhagen,

Cancun, Durban and Warsaw were politi-

cal washouts. Expectations for the next

meeting in Paris this December are low.

Academics increasingly point to democ-

racy as a reason for failure. NASA climate

researcher James Hansen was quoted

in 2009 in The Guardian as saying: “the

democratic process doesn’t quite seem

to be working”1. In a special issue of the

journal Environmental Politics in 2010,

political scientist Mark Beeson argued2

that forms of ‘good’ authoritarianism “may

become not only justifiable, but essen-

tial for the survival of humanity in any-

thing approaching a civilised form”. The

title of an opinion piece published earlier

this year in The Conversation, an online

magazine funded by universities, sums up

the issue: ‘Hidden crisis of liberal democ-

racy creates climate change paralysis’

(see go.nature.com/pqgysr).

The depiction of contemporary democ-

racies as ill-equipped to deal with climate

change comes from a range of considera-

tions. These include a deep-seated pes-

simism about the psychological make-up

of humans; the disinclination of people to

mobilize on issues that seem far removed;

and the presumed lack of intellectual com-

petence of people to grasp complex issues.

On top of these there is the presumed

scientific illiteracy of most politicians

and the electorate; the inability of govern-

ments locked into short-term voting cycles

to address long-term problems; the influ-

ence of vested interests on political agen-

das; the addiction to fossil fuels; and the

feeling among the climate-science com-

munity that its message falls on the deaf

ears of politicians.

Such views can be heard from the high-

est ranks of climate science. Hans Joachim

Schellnhuber, founding director of the

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact

Research and chair of the German Advi-

sory Council on Global Change, said of

the inaction in a 2011 interview with Ger

man newspaper Der Spiegel: “comfort and

ignorance are the biggest flaws of human

character. This is a potentially deadly mix”.

What, then, is the alternative? The solu-

tion hinted at by many people leans towards

a technocracy, in which decisions are made

by those with technical knowledge. This can

be seen in a shift in the statements of some

co-authors of Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change reports, who are moving

away from a purely advisory role towards

policy prescription (see, for example, ref. 3).

We must be careful what we wish for.

Nations that have followed the path of

‘authoritarian modernization’, such as

China and Russia, cannot claim to have

a record of environmental accomplish-

ments. In the past two or three years,

China’s system has made it a global leader

in renewables (it accounts for more than

one-quarter of the planet’s investment in

such energies4). Despite this, it is strug-

gling to meet ambitious environmen-

tal targets and will continue to lead the

world for some time in greenhouse-gas

emissions. As Chinese citizens become

wealthier and more educated, they will

surely push for more democratic inclusion

in environmental policymaking.

Broad-based support for environmen-

tal concerns and subsequent regulations

came about in

open democratic

argument on the

value of nature for

humanity. Democ-

racies learn from

mistakes; autocra-

cies lack flexibility

and adaptability5.

Democratic nations

have forged the most effective international

agreements, such as the Montreal Protocol

against ozone-depleting substances.

GLOBAL STAGE

Impatient scientists often privilege hegem-

onic players such as world powers, states,

transnational organizations, and multina-

tional corporations. They tend to prefer

sweeping policies of global mitigation over

messier approaches of local adaptation; for

them, global knowledge triumphs over local

know-how. But societal trends are going in

the opposite direction. The ability of large

institutions to impose their will on citizens

is declining. People are mobilizing around

local concerns and efforts6.

The pessimistic assessment of the ability

of democratic governance to cope with and

control exceptional circumstances is linked

to an optimistic assessment of the potential

of large-scale social and economic planning.

The uncertainties of social, political and eco-

nomic events are treated as minor obstacles

that can be overcome easily by implementing

policies that experts prescribe. But human-

ity’s capacity to plan ahead effectively is lim-

ited. The centralized social and economic

planning concept, widely discussed decades

ago, has rightly fallen into disrepute7.

The argument for an authoritarian politi-

cal approach concentrates on a single effect

that governance ought to achieve: a reduc-

tion of greenhouse-gas emissions. By focus-

ing on that goal, rather than on the economic

and social conditions that go hand-in-hand

with it, climate policies are reduced to

scientific or technical issues. But these are

not the sole considerations. Environmental

concerns are tightly entangled with other

political, economic and cultural issues that

both broaden the questions at hand and

open up different ways of approaching it.

Scientific knowledge is neither immediately

performative nor persuasive.

ENHANCE ENGAGEMENT

There is but one political system that is able

to rationally and legitimately cope with

the divergent political interests affected by

climate change and that is democracy. Only

a democratic system can sensitively attend

to the conflicts within and among nations

and communities, decide between different

policies, and generally advance the aspira-

tions of different segments of the popula-

tion. The ultimate and urgent challenge is

that of enhancing democracy, for example

by reducing social inequality8.

If not, the threat to civilization will be

much more than just changes to our physi-

cal environment. The erosion of democracy

is an unnecessary suppression of social

complexity and rights.

The philosopher Friedrich Hayek, who

led the debate against social and economic

planning in the mid-twentieth century9,

noted a paradox that applies today. As

science advances, it tends to strengthen the

idea that we should “aim at more deliber-

ate and comprehensive control of all human

activities”. Hayek pessimistically added: “It

is for this reason that those intoxicated by

the advance of knowledge so often become

the enemies of freedom”

. We should heed

his warning. It is dangerous to blindly

believe that science and scientists alone can

tell us what to do. ■

Nico Stehr is a sociologist and founding

director of the European Center for

Sustainability Research at Zeppelin

University in Friedrichshafen, Germany.

e-mail: nico.stehr@t-online.de

1. Adam, D. The Guardian ‘Leading climate

scientist: “democratic process isn’t working”’

(18 March 2009).

2. Beeson, M. Environ. Politics 19, 276–294 (2010).

3. Hansen, J. et al. PLoS ONE http://dx.doi.

org/10.1371/journal.pone.0081648 (2013).

4. REN21. Renewables 2015 Global Status Report

(REN21, 2015).

5. Runciman, D. The Confidence Trap: A History

of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the

Present (Princeton Univ. Press, 2013).

6. Stehr, N. Information, Power and Democracy,

Liberty is a Daughter of Knowledge (Cambridge

Univ. Press, 2015).

7. Pierre, J. Debating Governance: Authority,

Steering, and Democracy (Oxford Univ. Press,

2000).

8. Rosanvallon, P. The Society of Equals (Harvard

Univ. Press, 2013).

9. Hayek, F. A. Nature 148, 580–584 (1941).

10. Hayek, F. A. The Constitution of Liberty (Routledge,

1960).

450 | NATURE | VOL 525 | 24 SEPTEMBER 2015

COMMENT

“It is dangerous

to blindly

believe that

science and

scientists alone

can tell us what

to do.”

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