Climate Dialog, Climate Action: Can Democracy Do the Job?

ABSTRACT: The latest IPCC report forcefully states that immediate, decisive, and large-scale actions are needed to avert climate catastrophe. This essay presumes that democratic governments are best and most desirably positioned to take these actions. Yet in the countries most pivotal to global clim...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Fred Young Phillips, LaVonne Reimer, Rebecca Turner
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2022-03-01
Series:Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market and Complexity
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S219985312201040X
Description
Summary:ABSTRACT: The latest IPCC report forcefully states that immediate, decisive, and large-scale actions are needed to avert climate catastrophe. This essay presumes that democratic governments are best and most desirably positioned to take these actions. Yet in the countries most pivotal to global climate change, significant voting blocs are uninterested in environmental issues. The essay urges adding bottom-up dialog between environmental and anti-environmental voters, to current and future top-down technocratic “solutions”. To make this combination result in a unified pro-environment electorate, we must understand: religious objections to environmentalism; the capital-vs.-knowledge strife that slows polluting corporations’ green transitions; and the psychological mechanisms that can make inter-group dialog fruitful.
ISSN:2199-8531