In Net Zero Democracy I suggested that in many ways we in the UK do not really enjoy a functioning democracy, in large part because the establishment (including all main political parties) is in general agreement as to how it views the major issues confronting society. That viewpoint isn’t the same as that of a large part of the population, and thus the establishment works to ensure that the wrong-thinking populace may enjoy a facade of democracy, while power remains vested in those who think they know best.

I could discuss that proposition with regard to many important policy areas, but the one that concerns me for current purposes is with regard to climate policy. Here an alarming trend is in evidence, not restricted to the UK, but across the developed world. The trend in question is one for increasing pressure for governments to declare a climate emergency.

Of course many organisations have taken to making such declarations. Wikipedia tells us that climate emergency declarations have been made by many of the devolved jursidictions (Gibraltar Parliament, Isle of Man, Jersey, Northern Ireland Assembly, Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd). The same is true of seventeen English county councils, 136 English District Councils, 28 (or 85% of) London Borough Authorities, thirty English Metropolitan Districts, 41 unitary English authorities, three Northern Ireland local government areas, 22 Scottish local government areas and 24 Welsh local government areas. All of which is largely immaterial, since other than a bit of virtue-signalling, such declarations don’t carry much in the way of meaningful consequences.

So far so pointless. However, at national level, the consequences could be more serious, and could serve to undermine still further such democracy as continues to exist. Numerous national governments have now declared climate emergencies. If you want to keep up to date, Wikipedia is again a good place to start.

Apparently, populations covered by jurisdictions that have declared a climate emergency amount to over 1 billion citizens

At this stage, it still seems as though we are talking about little more than a bit of harmless virtue-signalling, but read the Wikipedia article, and alarm bells should start to sound. It tells us, inter alia:

Once a government makes a declaration, the next step for the declaring government is to set priorities to mitigate climate change, prior to ultimately entering a state of emergency or equivalent.

Aye, there’s the rub. The thing about a state of emergency is that it allows the normal rules of engagement to be set aside. Politicians can take it on themselves to ignore dissenting voices and to bypass normal democratic processes. And this is exactly what is desired by many campaigners, frustrated by what they see as the slow progress to be found in normal functioning democracies. As Wikipedia again tells us:

The term climate emergency has been promoted by climate activists and pro-climate action politicians to add a sense of urgency for responding to a long-term problem.

In the United States things recently came close to taking a very sinister turn. Frustrated by the ongoing opposition of Democrat Senator Manchin of West Virginia to Joe Biden’s Climate Bill (given a near-deadlocked US Senate), campaigners have been calling on president Biden to declare a climate emergency. Had he done so, this would not have been simply yet another case of non-consequential virtue-signalling, for very real consequences could have followed. Perhaps we should be pleased that Senator Manchin’s opposition appears to have crumbled, because with that, calls for the declaration of an emergency have become less strident.

A couple of writers whose views I respect have picked up on the potentially serious consequences of a Biden declaration. First, Brendan O’Neill writing in Spiked:

…if Biden were to declare a climate emergency, it would have disastrous consequences. For democracy, liberty and living standards. Indeed, the pro-emergency lobby openly celebrates the fact that an eco-emergency would allow the president to rise above pesky democracy…

…Politico says a state of emergency would ‘unlock potent tools for Biden’, allowing him to take drastic unilateral measures to cut emissions. Democratic debate be damned – let’s just act.

The whole article is well worth a read, not least for the light it shines on the bizarre reversal of the politics I grew up with. As Mr O’Neill says:

One of the most curious sights of the 21st century is radicals taking to the streets to demand a state of emergency. There was a time, back when politics was less crazy, when leftists and liberals were wary of emergency legislation. If a politician so much as uttered the word ‘emergency’ they’d be readying their placards and practicing their slogans. And with good reason. An ‘emergency’ is a deeply authoritarian affair. It involves suspending the normal political process on the basis that there’s a threat on the horizon that is so massive – whether it be terrorism, war, disease or some political ‘enemy within’ – that it cannot be dealt with by mere democratic means. No, only swiftly enforced brute law will do; only the rescinding of civil liberty will suffice.

Why would anyone actively campaign for such an abnormal and illiberal style of government? And yet here we are, in the 2020s, watching the supposedly right-on line up in their hundreds of thousands to plead with officialdom to put us all under emergency measures.

Bizarre, indeed. But it’s the world we now seem to live in, and it scares me.

For more information about those demanding a US Presidential declaration of a climate emergency, I refer you to US lawyer Francis Menton, writing in his blog, Manhattan Contrarian. Specifically, I refer to his article ‘Get Ready For The 100 Year Long Climate “Emergency”’:

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia -v- EPA on June 30, the bureaucracies in the “climate” space, together with all the environmental activists, have been thrown into a tizzy. The Supreme Court just declared that the bureaucracies have no power to fundamentally transform the use of energy in the economy without a clear direction from Congress, which on the climate issue cannot be found in existing statutes. And it has become clear that no further such statutory direction is likely to emerge from Congress before the mid-term elections in November. After November, changes in the make-up of Congress will probably make further such legislation even less likely, if not completely off the table for years if not decades. So what is a self-respecting climate alarmist to do?

To those over there on the left, the answer seems obvious: Demand declaration of a “climate emergency.” With that declaration, the statutory gap could perhaps be filled by another whole category of laws providing special powers in the event of a declaration of “emergency.”

What would those special powers be? Here I refer to an article in The Revelator by Dan Farber of the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley:

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law has compiled a helpful list of almost 150 statutes giving the president special powers during emergencies. The list doesn’t map the outer perimeter of presidential powers — there are other laws that give presidents powers to take action on the basis of national security, and the president also has some ill-defined, though not unlimited, powers to take action without explicit congressional authorization. But the list provides a good start, and here are just a few of the possibilities:

  • Oil leases are required to have clauses allowing them to be suspended during national emergencies. (43 USC 1341) If climate change is a national emergency caused by fossil fuels, then suspension seems like a logical response.
  • The president has emergency powers to respond to industrial shortfalls in national emergencies. (50 USC 4533). This could be used to support expansion of battery or electrical vehicle production. Another provision allows the president to extend loan guarantees to critical industries during national emergencies. (50 USC 4531). This could be used to support renewable energy more generally.
  • The secretary of Transportation has broad power to “coordinate transportation” during national emergencies. (49 U.S.C 114). This might allow various restrictions on automobile and truck use to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases.
  • The president may invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to deal with “any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States.” (50 USC 1701-1707). That description certainly applies to climate change. According to the Brennan Center, this Act “confers broad authority to regulate financial and other commercial transactions involving designated entities, including the power to impose sanctions on individuals and countries.” Conceivably, these powers could be deployed against companies or countries trafficking in fossil fuels.

To conclude, I can do no better than quote Francis Menton again:

Here’s the problem. There is no sense in which the climate is an “emergency” within the ordinary meaning of that word in the English language. Predictions by climate models of a few degrees of temperature rise over the next century are the opposite of an “emergency.” Indeed, the statutes granting various “emergency” powers to the Executive all deal with the question of time periods too short to give the Congress time to enact legislation appropriate to the situation at hand. That circumstance is the opposite of what we have with the climate.

But if you are on the left, or a climate activist, this situation is just too important to wait for Congressional action that may never come. An “emergency” must be declared, to last for — how long? A hundred years? During which time, the bureaucrats can issue whatever orders they want, and spend whatever funds they want, all in the name of saving the planet. None of which will or can have any effect on the 85% (and growing) of world carbon emissions that come from outside the U.S. and which the U.S. government cannot affect in any way.

I still think of myself as being “on the left”. I can’t speak for Brendan O’Neill, but I suspect that he and his fellow writers at Spiked regard themselves in the same way. I share his bemusement at the alacrity with which many of those on the left now seek to ditch democracy. Are we witnessing the death of democracy?

20 Comments

  1. Gee Man if there wasn’t enough to worry about concerning the seemingly inevitable movement towards climate change altering almost everything about our lives, you go and add another. What I had assumed was a rather meaningless adoption of the alarmist mantra of climate alarmism : that it is an emergency, you now reveal as yet another reason to fret about. Thanks Mark.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. “Are we witnessing the death of democracy?”

    I’m afraid we are. The historian Peter Gray once wrote:

    “As the ruler must make his people happy the subject must, by God, obey and be happy.”

    To do this we exercise our freedom to give up our freedom. Freedom of speech is also a casualty but that can be achieved without legislation and calling an emergency. You can ask the BBC about that.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. I’m not so sure about the bit concerning leftists and how, in times gone by, they would be wary of emergency legislation. Back in the day, many of these leftists were communists who would have been very sympathetic towards the Soviet Union with its authoritarian state. After the collapse of that State, where did those leftists go? Well, there were quite a lot involved in the creation of the Green Party. Looks like they are going to get what they wanted all along.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. John, there are leftists and then there are leftists. Maybe you’ve correctly identified that the green ones are and always have been essentially happy with authoritarianism. But what about the rest of us? What happened to my fellow-travellers?

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Mark,

    Indeed, ‘leftist’ is a very broad term and I wasn’t using it to refer to the form of socialism to which you may subscribe.

    Like

  6. The rational response to a real Climate Emergency would be adaptation rather than mitigation. Governments that declare a Climate Emergency should be subsidizing residential air conditioning rather than heat pumps. They should allocate more funding for flood control – many flood defences are inadequate for the current climate. Water supply systems that are are not currently sufficient for expanding populations need to be improved. And governments should fund separation of storm sewers so that raw sewage is not dumped into rivers. It’s pretty basic stuff. Just get the priorities right.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. Attacks on democracy by the green blob can take many forms. Here’s another example:

    “Tory MP urged to quit job as adviser to ‘climate denier’ US fossil fuel firm
    Critics say Mark Pritchard’s £46,800-a-year role with Linden Energy is ‘highly concerning’”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/31/tory-mp-mark-pritchard-linden-energy-climate-fossil-fuel-firm

    “A Tory MP has been urged to quit his second job as a £325-an-hour adviser to a US fossil fuel firm after the company was accused of using “classic climate denial” tactics to delay action on the climate crisis.

    Mark Pritchard, 55, Conservative MP for the Wrekin in Shropshire, took on a role providing “strategic communications advice” to Linden Energy Holdings in May, official records show. He will be paid £46,800 a year for working 12 hours a month through his consulting company, Map Advisory.

    Documents obtained by the Observer suggest Texas-based Linden Energy – founded by a former lobbyist for George Bush – pushed for the increased use of fossil fuels while downplaying the role of carbon emissions in the climate crisis.

    In a November 2021 presentation entitled “The reality of climate change”, Linden Energy’s chief operating officer, Ray Leonard, emphasises non-human factors in global warming and claims it is “virtually impossible” to avoid 2C warming by 2050, before arguing for more investment in natural gas.

    While there is no suggestion of wrongdoing, the findings have led to renewed calls for tighter rules on MPs’ second jobs, as well as fresh concerns about fossil fuel lobbying.”

    Perfectly reasonable comments and no suggestion of wrongdoing, but it’s still “highly concerning”, apparently.

    There are several sides to the argument about MPs having second jobs. Personally I’m on the side of all paid lobbying and second jobs for MPs being banned. They should be paid properly for their work as MPs, and they should give that job their full time and attention IMO. The number of them being paid absurd amounts of money for doing very little of any value (again, IMO) is the real issue, so far as I’m concerned. I wonder if the Guardian/Observer would publish articles urging MPs to give up paid jobs for green lobby groups? I suspect not.

    Like

  9. As so often, Ben seems to be on the front-line of what’s happening – or at least of what Twitter memes are happening and trending.

    Why I have highlighted this on Mark’s important thread about emergency powers? Because this kind of illegal behaviour, misdirected as it is, will be used as justification by those wishing to bring in the UK’s equivalent of the 1933 Enabling Act for the very worst of reasons. (Hitler became the totalitarian dictator of Germany through such a ‘constitutional’ declaration of emergency, based on Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution.)

    Do I think our situation is as bad as it was for Jews under the Nazis in 1933 or even 1941-45? No, of course not. But it’s a lesson from history not to play games with such language and then get serious about making it foundational law.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Hmm. For me, fair comment.

    Though someone responding hopes that democratic elections will pull us back from the brink. Emergency powers would bypass all that. Then we really could be in for a rerun of the uncaring madness of Mao.

    Liked by 2 people

  12. Beth: Actually that’s about Mao’s three great ‘initiatives’ – as you know. Aka his three great platforms for terror and mass murder. But they never call it that on the way in, do they? Thank you for reminding us of the very dark side of utopianism mixed with paranoia that so few in the West can be bothered to face. (My Cantonese sister-in-law being a notable exception, not entirely surprisingly.)

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Someone I don’t follow and that none of the people I follow follow. Nick Morrell and I don’t I think share much in common politics-wise. But the phrase “endless authoitarian rule while pretending to be the champion of the people” did ring bells, with emergency powers in mind. And there’s also paranoia on show here, this time from Nadine Dorries. At least that’s my reading. Who’s least likely to give in to the Net Zero paranoids? Search me.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. >Caesar was an overly-entitled patrician on the verge of achieving endless authoitarian rule while pretending to be the >champion of the people

    — NICK MORRELL (@plodinnotts)

    According to Cicero. Some who was as reliable witness as the ISD.

    Oligarchs always manage to distort reality in their own favour.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. I think if you read history you can’t help having what Thomas Sowell called ‘the constrained view of human nature’
    and adopt a positive view of checks and balances to constrain our leaders’ power over us. Power does seem to corrupt.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.

    I do worry that (in the western world at least) the Green Blob is close to achieving absolute power – embedded in the UN, EU, mainstream political parties, civil service, mainstream media, academia, schools and nurseries, local governments, NHS, etc etc.

    Liked by 1 person

  17. They’re still at it:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/28/joe-biden-climate-emergency-declaration

    “Could the president achieve these ends through normal rule-making processes? Potentially, but we know industry-funded litigation would drag the process out for years, delaying the sweeping, necessary changes our communities and wildlife so desperately need today. And could Congress also step into the breach? They should, but we cannot afford to wait for congressional gridlock to break yet again.”

    Congress? Normal democratic procedures? Pah! This is urgent. My urgency trumps your democracy.

    Like

  18. “Brazilian Gov’t eyes permanent climate emergency for over 1,000 cities”

    https://en.mercopress.com/2023/03/27/brazilian-gov-t-eyes-permanent-climate-emergency-for-over-1-000-cities

    Brazil’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva Sunday admitted that President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva’s administration was considering the possibility of declaring a state of climate emergency in 1,038 municipalities mapped as most vulnerable, Agencia Brasil reported.

    “There is a suggestion that is being debated within the government to declare a permanent state of climate emergency in municipalities that are proven to be vulnerable so that there is continued action,” Minister Silva said while visiting areas affected by flooding in Manaus after heavy rains Saturday left 172 families homeless.

    Silva also said that extreme events, whether drought or heavy rains, can be forecast and thus in some cases even the removal of populations from risk areas should be planned and executed.

    In her view, this would be the objective of the permanent emergency decree: to allow preventive works, such as soil studies, drainage, and social assistance work. “We are living under the effect of climate change that is getting worse every day,” Silva said.

    Anticipating the criticism about the lack of transparency in public spending that an emergency entails, because it circumvents the Bidding Law, the minister suggested the creation of a permanent structure – with committees, monitoring teams, and scholars – to oversee the allocation of public resources.

    It sounds innocuous, doesn’t it? But note the reference to circumventing the Bidding Law. This is why campaigners want to adopt emergency powers – they can sidestep democratic oversight, in the knowledge that democracy might get in the way of their plans.

    Like

  19. Slightly (but only slightly) O/T:

    “Why Legislators Should Reject the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/04/02/why-legislators-should-reject-the-whos-proposals-for-pandemics/

    …The WHO is promoting a pandemic treaty (currently in the form of a draft called ‘CA+’) and amendments to the existing International Health Regulations (IHR) to increase its power during health emergencies. These proposals also broaden the scope of emergencies to include potential rather than actual harm…

    …This all represents a drastic departure from the principles of public health. The WHO was originally intended to serve countries, not instruct them. The proposals aim to reduce individual and national decision-making power, replacing this with obedience to the WHO. Of course, the organisation’s leadership denies this is the case. But this reflects a public messaging campaign that has little resemblance to the words in the proposed treaty. In WHO parlance, this denial amounts to misinformation…

    …Before entrusting one’s heath to others, it is essential to know that they are competent. Despite having previous evidence-based guidelines for pandemics, the WHO lost the plot disastrously with COVID-19. It supported policies that have worsened such diseases as malaria, tuberculosis and malnutrition, and increased debt and poverty to lock in poorer health for the next generation. These policies increased child labour and helped to force young girls into child marriage, whilst denying formal education to hundreds of millions of children. Sick, elderly people were unable to get care, and healthy people were needlessly confined at home. They have promoted the largest ever upwards concentration of wealth in history while contributing to mass impoverishment.

    For the past two years, the WHO has embarked on a project to mass vaccinate 70% of African populations. This despite half the population being under 20 years of age, and therefore at minimal risk from Covid and despite the WHO’s own data showing the vast majority have already had COVID-19, which provides natural protection against reinfection. The proposed treaty seeks powers that will enable it to repeat these types of responses, based on their own declarations of emergencies.

    Countries adopting the proposed IHR amendments will accept WHO recommendations as obligatory. The list of potential demands covered in the IHR includes border closures and refusal of individual travel, isolation of “suspect” persons, mandated medical examinations and vaccination, exit screening and requirements of proof of testing. These are all on the table when the WHO unilaterally declares such interventions necessary because of a “risk” to other countries…

    Like

  20. Worth a read in its own right, but I post this here because of the paragraph I cite below:

    “Globetrotting green elites are a threat to democracy
    A new superclass of eco-globalists is making life miserable for the rest of us.”

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/06/globetrotting-green-elites-are-a-threat-to-democracy/

    …The authoritarian impulse of eco-hysteria is becoming clearer by the day. This is why they’re so keen to replace that flat, tired phrase ‘climate change’ with the more shrill ‘climate emergency’. Because in an emergency, special powers are often required to ensure that the greater good of existential security is taking precedence over the lesser good of people’s freedom and desires. Ardern knows the game: she declared a ‘climate emergency’ in New Zealand in December 2020….

    Like

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