Introduction

The environment raises many questions of normative political theory. Environmental phenomena such as climate change, biodiversity loss, natural resource use and depletion, air pollution, the disposal of plastics into oceans, and nuclear energy all raise important ethical questions with which citizens and politicians must grapple. They must decide whom they will hold responsible for preventing climate change, whether it is appropriate for them to use nuclear energy, and how to weigh the cost of losses of biodiversity involved in projects like building dams against the benefits like economic growth that they may produce.

When addressing such challenges, political activists and politicians often appeal to concepts like ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’, but what do these mean, and what implications do they have? For example, do they, as some suggest, call for abandoning p. 285↵economic growth as an overriding policy objective? Some even argue that tackling global environmental problems calls for policies to reduce world population size. Is this permissible?

Finally, we might ask what implications protecting the environment has for existing political institutions. Some, for example, think that modern democratic systems are unable to cope with the challenges posed by environmental degradation

This chapter aims to explore some of these issues. Before we consider the normative issues, however, we need to complete two preliminary tasks.

The environment and its relationship to humanity

Justice, value, and the environment

Having prepared the ground we can now examine four sets of questions. The first set concern why the environment matters. It might seem obvious that the environment matters, but it is worth exploring why it matters and what is wrong with environmental degradation. As we will see, people disagree about what kind of environmental change matters, and thus about what measures can and should be taken.

Some think that many of the environmental phenomena mentioned above—climate change, ozone depletion, acid rain, pollution—are cases of injustice. In what sense, however, are they? To answer this we need to explore the relationship between our understanding of justice, on the one hand, and the environment on the other. An example helps illustrate the point. Martha Nussbaum (2006) and Amartya Sen (2009, Part III) have argued that justice requires the protection of what they term ‘capabilities’. Sen does not give a detailed account of the content of these capabilities. Nussbaum, however, does. She argues that justice requires the protection of the following: ‘life,’ ‘bodily health,’ ‘bodily integrity,’ ‘senses, imagination, and thought,’ ‘emotions,’ ‘practical reason,’ ‘affiliation,’ ‘other species,’ ‘play,’ and ‘control over one’s environment’ (Nussbaum, 2006, 76–8).

Now if we connect this with the environment, Nussbaum’s view would entail that people are entitled to the kind of environment needed to enjoy these kinds of capabilities (Schlosberg, 2012). This would include ensuring an environment that can sustain capabilities such as ‘life’, ‘bodily health’ and thus food. In addition to this, the environment does not simply affect fundamental necessities that are needed for basic survival, such as food and water. It also affects people’s capabilities to exercise their ‘imagination’, their ‘emotions’ and their capacity for ‘play’.

As Schlosberg notes, environmental changes (such as habitat loss or rising sea-levels) will compel some to leave their traditional homelands and this enforced dislocation can undermine their capabilities for mental health and emotional attachments and loyalties (Schlosberg, 2012). Drawing on this line of reasoning, some conclude that climate change should be seen as a ‘cultural injustice’ (Heyward, 2014). In addition to the above, externally imposed environmental change—especially rapid, unpredictable, and dramatic change—also clearly undermines what Nussbaum terms ‘control over one’s environment’.

p. 289↵Some, of course, may be unpersuaded by the capabilities approach. Many thinkers, including Rawls and Dworkin among many others, do not endorse it (➜ See Chapter 6). It is worth then noting other values. Consider, for example, the concept of human rights (➜ See Chapter 11). This is a key moral value and can be endorsed by adherents to a wide variety of different philosophical perspectives.¹ Someone who adopts a human rights perspective might then argue that the environment matters at least in part because environmental degradation undermines core human rights to food and water, to health and to life. Climate change, for example, threatens each of these (Caney, 2010b). So too does biodiversity loss for, as noted above, biological diversity is needed for ensuring that people have enough food and for protecting health.

A critic might ask whether this is true of all human rights theories. What about libertarian approaches like Nozick’s (1974), which emphasize negative rights of non-interference (➜ See Chapter 2 and Chapter 6)? In reply, it is worth noting that some environmental phenomena impact on core libertarian commitments such as the right to private property and the right to physical integrity. Both of these are jeopardized by climate change (Davidson, 2008, 2, 20–4, 42–3, 132–3). Rising sea levels and severe weather events will, for example, destroy many people’s property. Climate change will also lead to loss of life. Think of severe weather events involving flooding or death from heat stress. Or consider acid rain. This harms people’s property and their health. Furthermore, these harms are occurring because of other humans’ behaviour. A libertarian would think that there is no injustice if the harms wholly arose from natural phenomena and were not caused by humans. But that is not the case for the environmental phenomena we are discussing, like climate change, biodiversity loss, or acid rain.

At this point someone might note that these harms arise from the behaviour of very many people interacting together. However, it is not clear why that should entail that those whose property is destroyed or whose life is taken are not being treated unjustly. Should it make a difference whether my land is submerged because of one person (say, a neighbour who diverts water onto my land) or whether my land is submerged because of the actions of thousands (say, through their greenhouse gas emissions)? The relevant points here—from a libertarian point of view—seem to be that my land has been destroyed and that others did it to me. So libertarians, the argument would go, have reason to be concerned about environmental degradation and phenomena like climate change.

Three further points should be noted. First, the theories mentioned so far have all emphasized the importance of the environment. One important question that remains is: Can we replace environmental losses with other goods? Are environmental goods, such as natural resources, in some way, substitutable? Our answer to this question will make a considerable practical difference for if they are substitutable then we can use up more natural resources as long as we provide satisfactory substitutes in the form of capital, technology or knowledge. This is the kind of view taken by many economists. Others will argue that some kinds of loss simply cannot be made up for by providing other goods. The debate is about different kinds of sustainability. Proponents of what has been termed ‘weak sustainability’ allow that there are substitutes for the loss of natural resources, whereas proponents of what has been termed ‘strong sustainability’ deny this in at least some cases (Beckerman and Pasek, 2001: Ch 5, esp 74–6; Neumayer, 2003). The two kinds yield different accounts of ‘sustainable development’. If we use the weak account, ‘sustainable development’ will refer to economic development

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that allows the use or destruction of natural resources if and because people create adequate substitutes. And if we use the strong account, ‘sustainable development’ will refer to development that does not permit the destruction of certain kinds of natural resource on the grounds that they are non-substitutable. (For a more complex framework see Dobson (1998).)

A second point to note is that the emphasis so far has been entirely on how the environment is valuable for human beings. We should, however, ask whether this focus is too narrow. Some, for example, will argue that other animals have moral status and thus the impact of environmental degradation on their interests should be taken into account (Cripps, 2013: Ch). Vegetarians and vegans, for example, will obviously think that the interests of nonhuman animals should be included. Note, however, that even those who do not think it wrong to eat meat might still think it wrong to act in ways that cause harm to non-human animals when that harm is avoidable and unnecessary. They might thus object to causing desertification or flooding that results in the unnecessary and painful death of animals.²

Emphasizing the importance of the interests of animals draws in a wider range of considerations than concentrating on human interests. However, our focus can be expanded even further. Some others will argue that the natural world has value in itself and will thus deny that its value is reducible to the effects it has on human (or even sentient) life.

To evaluate these views about non-human animals and about the intrinsic value of the natural world it is worth considering an example. Consider, the spread of plastics into oceans. Each year, it is reported, humans add between 4.4 and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic into the oceans (Borrelle et al., 2017). As a result the oceans are full of microplastics, fish and sea life digest plastics, there are enormous collections of plastic swirling around in the world’s oceans, and islands across the world have beaches strewn with plastic as well as other human debris. This is avoidable because we can reduce our use of plastics and because we can recycle them or use biodegradable materials. To focus the mind, consider the case of Henderson Island in the South Pacific Ocean. It is uninhabited and far from human civilization. The p. 291↵nearest major industrialized centre is 5,000 km away. Two scientists reported that there were at least 37,661,395 plastic items on this small island (of 5x7km) and that this was a very conservative estimate because it excluded all the very small items and items buried more than 10cm beneath the surface (Lavers and Bond, 2017).

Suppose we consider this marine pollution and ask what is wrong with it. One response would be to appeal to its effects on human beings. It has been argued that the massive amounts of microplastics that now exist in the world’s oceans jeopardize human health (because people eat seafood that has ingested the microplastics) (Borrelle et al., 2017). This gives us a reason to curb the practice of dumping plastics into the oceans. However, it is worth asking whether this fully explains why people find the description of Henderson Island and ocean plastics more generally disturbing.

A second response might be to argue that at least part of the reason many people now strongly oppose dumping plastics in the world’s oceans stems from a belief that these human practices treat nonhuman animals—our fellow creatures on the planet—in unacceptable ways. A huge proportion of fish and seabirds, for example, have swallowed plastic, leading in many cases to death. When we reflect on the plight of these animals we might think that we have duties not to engage in such harmful practices.

Third, some might think that neither of the first two responses completely explains what is troubling about all the plastic in the oceans and islands like Henderson Island. They might think that it is just intrinsically wrong to despoil the environment in this way—especially if it is gratuitous and avoidable. That is, it is wrong independently of its effects on humans and other animals. This third point of view condemns the attitude to the natural world expressed by a ‘throw away’ culture that treats the world’s oceans like a gigantic rubbish bin.

In short, we might have three distinct kinds of reasons for caring about the natural world. Our concern might be grounded in a commitment to people’s rights, a commitment to the interests and rights of nonhuman animals, or a commitment to the intrinsic value of the natural world.

At this point, however, we need to introduce a third point. Our focus has been on reasons to be concerned about the protection of the environment. However, we also need to look at the activities that cause environmental degradation. It might be tempting to say that people should simply stop acting in ways which impact on the environment, but this is too quick. Many of the activities that have environmental impacts serve important human interests. For this reason, we need to strike a balance between, on the one hand, the use of the environment to maintain the rights we think that people are entitled to enjoy, and, on the other hand, limits on that use.

Consider, in this context, the plight of the global poor. A large proportion of the world’s population live in severe poverty and many lack access to electricity. They surely have a right to develop and to lift themselves out of poverty. Indeed, they might point out that the very reasons that people give for protecting the environment (it is needed for food, health and to enjoy a decent standard of living) are also reasons for them to develop (➜ See Chapter 10). If this is right then the onus seems to fall on the more affluent members of the world to dramatically reduce their environmental footprint and to enable the world’s least advantaged to develop in sustainable ways—that is ways which do not undermine the environmental preconditions needed for others to enjoy the standard of living to which they are entitled.p. 292↵

Responsibilities to the future

So far, we have considered why protecting the environment might matter, and the extent to which protecting the environment is required by justice. A comprehensive answer to the question of whether justice requires the protection of the environment also requires us to consider a second set of questions—namely what responsibilities do we have to the future?

Many environmental problems have impacts that reach into the far future. A good example of this is climate change. The environmental scientist David Archer reports that if we burn one ton of coal at one point in time ‘[t]he CO₂ coming from a quarter of that ton will still be affecting the climate one thousand years from now’ and ‘[a]bout 10% of the CO₂ from coal will still be affecting the climate in one hundred thousand years’ (2009, 1). A second illustration of the ways in which human activities can have long-term effects is nuclear energy. This can result in waste that needs to be kept safe for 10,000 years (Archer 2009, 11).

We, thus, face the question of what responsibilities those alive at any one time owe to future generations (see Key Concept 14.2). To answer this we need first to consider a methodological question. How can we derive an account of responsibilities to future generations? One helpful suggestion to this was made by Brian Barry. Barry writes that we should start with our account of what we owe to those currently alive today. We should start, that is, with what we might call our account of intra-generational justice. Then, he argues, we should examine the ways in which the inter-generational context is different and ask whether the differences make a moral difference (Barry 1999, 93–4 and 96–100).

For example, some argue that people can only have moral rights if they are alive and so future people cannot have rights. Given this, they argue, we cannot call for environmental protection on the grounds that it is needed to protect the rights of future people (Beckerman and Pasek, 2001, 15–16 and 19). Many philosophers are unpersuaded by this argument. One widely endorsed response is given by Robert Elliot who says that even if future people do not have rights now (something that he thinks could be contested) they will have these rights in the future, and that gives contemporaries duties now (Elliot, 1989, 162: see also Meyer, 2016, Section 2.1 and Tremmel, 2009, 49). On this view, given that future people will have rights to clean water and food and to health, it follows that earlier generations have duties not to act in

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ways that threaten those rights. So, they ought not destroy the biosphere because it is vital to ensuring that people’s rights to food and health are respected, and they ought not to trigger dangerous climate change for similar reasons.

At this point a critic might introduce a second challenge. In his influential book, Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit draws attention to what he terms the ‘Non-Identity Problem’ (1984, Ch 16). The problem is this: one feature of our relationship to the future is that who gets born in the future depends heavily on events now. Consider a particular person, Sanjay. He is born because his parents mated at a specific time. Suppose that the society in which his parents live had adopted different policies. Then his parents might never have met. Even if they had met they might not have decided to have sex. Or they might not have had the sex that resulted in Sanjay’s birth. Had things been different, then, Sanjay might never have been born. To see why this matters consider an example that Parfit gives. He describes a society that is considering either to deplete its stock of natural resources (Depletion) or to conserve them (Conservation) (Parfit, 1984, 361–4). Suppose that the society decides to deplete. As a result, the standard of living in the future is much lower than it would have been if it had adopted Conservation. Depletion is surely highly morally questionable. Note, though, that if a society depletes then—for the reasons given above—the people who will be born in the future will be different to those who would have been born had Conservation been implemented. As a result, once we look far into the future no one can say that they have been made worse off by Depletion (Parfit, 1984, 363).

This last bit is the crucial point. Most people will think that Depletion is wrong, and yet it might not leave any one worse off than they would have been had Conservation been adopted. This is puzzling because much ethical thought condemns actions when and because it makes someone worse off, but Depletion does not do that.

What should we think of this? One response is to decide that if policies like Depletion really do not make anyone worse off than those people would have been then we should just accept that it is not wrong. This, though, seems a very implausible response. After all it produces a world in which the standard of living is much lower than it would be if Conservation had been adopted.

p. 294↵Another response is to reject the idea that a policy like Depletion could only be wrong if it makes some people worse than they would otherwise be. One version of this response is given by Jeffrey Reiman. He distinguishes between focusing on the general ‘properties’ of people (the fact that people need drinkable water, food, protection from disease, and so on) and the ‘particulars’ of people (their own individual personality and character) (Reiman 2007, especially 83–86 and 88–92). Furthermore, in line with a Rawlsian approach to thinking about justice, he suggests that justice is concerned with the former. That is, it is concerned with protecting and advancing the core interests of human beings as such: its concern is not with particular people.

Now if we think about the question of whether to deplete resources or not in these terms it provides a way of avoiding the Non-Identity Problem. It does so because its focus when making decisions about the future will be on the standard of living of those alive in the future whoever they may be, and irrespective of which particular persons exist. Justice to future generations, it says, requires acting in such a way that whoever lives in the future enjoys a fair share of burdens and benefits. Thus, from this point of view it does not matter whether mitigating climate change does not make the lives of particular people in the future go better than they would have otherwise have gone. What matters is whether those who live in the future (whoever they are) enjoy a just standard of living, and in particular whether they enjoy one free from the ravages of dangerous climate change, depletion, or biodiversity loss. This approach focuses—plausibly—on the standard of living that people can enjoy, but it does so without running into the Non-Identity Problem.

This is not the only response to the Non-Identity Problem (for a review and critique of many proposed solutions see Boonin, 2014). However, it offers one way of avoiding the Non-Identity Problem.

One final comment. It is important to recognize that Parfit himself does not think that the Non-Identity Problem shows that we do not have duties to future people. He thinks that we have equally strong reasons to protect future people whether our actions affect their identities or not (1984, 366–9). His point is that certain very common ways of thinking about responsibilities (‘Do not make people worse off than they would otherwise be!’) produce unacceptable answers to the Non-Identity Problem for they cannot tell us what would be wrong with policies like Depletion.

Other challenges to thinking about what we may owe to future people remain. For example, some might argue that we lack knowledge of the future. We do not know what developments will occur. Perhaps, for example, we will be able to develop cheap ways of capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (what is known as ‘carbon capture and storage’) and thus prevent climate change. Consider people living 300 years ago and suppose that we ask what they could have been expected to know about life today. If we then compare it to what actually occurred we get a sense of just how limited our understanding of the future might be. They could not have foreseen phenomena like air flight, trains, nuclear weapons, computers, mobile phones, the internet, and anthropogenic climate change and much else besides. What might we not be able to see?

This raises a good point. The important question is what follows from this. For example, our ignorance does not show that future people do not matter or that we do not have responsibilities to them. So the question then has to be not ‘Do we have responsibilities to future people?’ but rather ‘What is the nature of our responsibility to future people given p. 295↵risk and uncertainty?’ We need, that is, to consider what we owe others in a very uncertain world. Ultimately, we have to act on the best available standard of information available to us, whether it is on the effects of nuclear waste, or ocean acidification, or ozone layer depletion. For some, this means trying to work out the probability and value of all possible outcomes, deriving from this the expected value of each choice we have and then choosing that policy with the best expected value. Others appeal to some version of what has come to be known as the ‘precautionary principle’. One version of this is in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, article 15 of which states that

Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

However, there are other interpretations of what precautionary action should be taken and when it is triggered (UNFCCC Article 3.3; McKinnon, 2012, Ch3).

Policies to protect the environment

Suppose that someone has reflected on the questions raised so far and decided that it is important to protect the environment. Suppose, for example, that they think that this is owed to future generations and to their contemporaries. As a result, they decide that we should put policies in place to protect the environment. At this point they will then face a third set of normative questions because policies to protect the environment themselves often raise ethical questions. Two kinds, in particular, are worth mentioning.

First, one important question is: How should the burdens involved in protecting the environment be distributed? What is a fair share of the burden? To give an example: if humanity must reduce its use of nitrogen (because the run-off results in dead zones), who should have to bear that sacrifice? The question of distributive justice so central to many debates in contemporary political theory applies here, for we need to know what would be the fair distribution of any sacrifice involved. I will return to this question in the case study and different principles of justice will be considered there.

A second set of issues arises when we consider the causes of environmental degradation. Some argue that one of the main drivers of environmental change is the increase in the p. 296↵world’s population. This has grown from 2 billion just after World War I to 7 billion in 2012 (Livi-Bacci, 2017, 225). The more people there are, then, other things being equal (as we will see this is an important qualification), the more greenhouse gas emissions, the more land that needs to be used for agriculture, the greater the demand for scarce resources, the more waste that is produced, and so on. With this in mind some have argued that ensuring environmental sustainability requires limiting world population size. Sarah Conly (2016), for example, argues that couples may only have one child.

What should we make of these claims? To evaluate them it is useful to begin by examining the determinants of environmental sustainability. The most common framework for analysing these employs the so-called IPAT formula. This maintains that environmental impact (I) is a function of the size of the population (P), how affluent the people are (A), by which is meant how much they consume, and the kind of technology (T) available (Commoner, 1972; Ehrlich and Holdren, 1972). These collectively determine the environmental impact. Population clearly matters, but then so too do the levels of consumption (levels which vary enormously within and between countries) and the extent to which people have access to clean technology (which again varies considerably).

Given this, it follows that an adequate response should consider all of the determinants of environmental sustainability and not just one in isolation. And with this in mind, one plausible approach would be what might be termed Ecological Liberalism. This holds (a) that agents (where this might refer to individuals or societies) must live within ecological limits (this is the ecological part), but, (b) that they have some choice as to how they do so (this is the liberal part). Some, for example, might wish to reduce their consumption of material resources and invest in clean technology, but have more children than others. Others, by contrast, might prefer to have fewer children but enjoy lives with more consumption (Caney, 2019).

Such an approach has several virtues. First, it results in environmental sustainability. Second, it respects choice for it gives people some discretion as to how they discharge their duties, rather than prescribing a uniform one-size fits all approach. Third, because it is flexible, it is more politically realistic than one that stipulates that a single way to reduce environmental impact.

If this is right, and if we use the IPAT formula, it is not clear why we should accept Conly’s claim that each couple has a right to one child but not more (Conly, 2016). For example, we cannot determine whether this is sufficient to ensure environmental sustainability without knowing what levels of consumption and what kinds of technology are available. We need an empirically informed account of what is needed to achieve sustainability and whether her proposal is necessary for that. It also seems unlikely that the same limit would apply to all since some have a much higher environmental impact than others. Conly would need to explain why we should insist on equal limits to procreation when some might have more children and yet have a lower environmental impact than others because they reduce consumption and increase energy efficiency.

At this point it is worth introducing another perspective. For some will put the emphasis on consumption. On their view, it is important to call into question the assumption that we should seek unlimited economic growth. From a certain green perspective the pursuit of economic growth and a higher GDP is misconceived both as an account of what matters in life and because it is ecologically disastrous. Taking the environment seriously, then, requires a deep transformation of the economy and changing its assumed priorities (Jackson, 2017; Meadows et al., 1972; Shiva, 2016: see Key Thinker 14.1 and Key Text 14.1).p. 297↵

Clearly, when assessing these competing perspectives, it is crucial to have a well-grounded grasp of the facts. We need to know whether clean technology and reducing unnecessary consumption are enough; and citizens, policy makers and political theorists need to take these on board before making any decision. However, the empirics are not enough. At stake are also fundamentally ethical questions—questions about people’s individual rights to procreate, the claims of others and how we can balance these, and what kind of society we want.

Who makes the decisions? Democracy and governance

We turn now, finally, to a fourth set of questions. What political system is best? Some, for example, question whether democracy is well-suited to protecting the environment (on democracy ➜ See Chapter 4). Why might democracy fail to protect the environment? One common argument is that democracy is focused unduly on the short-term. Governments concentrate on short-term economic objectives and, as a result, ignore long-term problems like protecting the environment.

Democracies might focus on the short-term for several reasons (Caney, 2018, 489–90). The first concerns human psychology: we suffer from various motivational limitations. For p. 298↵example, we tend to be moved to act when we witness and experience people suffering in the here and now, but find it harder to be motivated by abstract projections about people in the distant future (Weber, 2006: also Leopold, 1968; 1949, 214). As a result, we may not be motivated to take the necessary steps to prevent long-term environmental degradation. More generally, we are often short-sighted.

Second, governments in democracies have an incentive to tailor their policies to win the next election and thus have an incentive to produce short-term gains even if they result in long-term losses. In addition to this, as Hans Jonas points out, future people cannot make their voices heard (Jonas, 1984, 22). One attractive feature of a democracy is that those affected by policies can express their views and campaign against ones that harm their interests. Those who are yet to be born lack this accountability mechanism.

Third, it is quite hard for governments to implement long-term plans because whatever they put in place might be undone by their successors. A government committed to preventing climate change may implement aggressive mitigation policies, but their successors may simply reverse those policies.

What should be done to address these concerns? One response might be to create constitutional limits. Countries with a written constitution might entrench rights (including environmental rights) for future generations into their constitution, and empower the judiciary to strike down legislation that jeopardizes these rights (Hayward, 2005). Some might object to imposing limits on the decision-making capacities of the legislature, but the limits are being imposed to protect others’ rights—and in particular, others who cannot use the political process to defend their rights. Why, it might be asked, should we allow some to violate the rights of others?

Another approach is to focus on the selection of representatives. Some argue that the national legislature should include both conventional representatives and representatives for future generations. (For different versions of this approach see Dobson (1996) and Ekeli (2005).) These proposals will face practical problems (how many representatives should there be?). We might also ask why we should assume that anyone appointed to this role would necessarily promote the long-term. If voters are myopic why will they not choose representatives for the future who share their own (myopic) goals?

Perhaps the most promising approach is to start by considering the drivers of short-termism and then thinking of ways to address those. We could, for example, design the policy-making process to try to mitigate some of the cognitive and motivational biases that encourage short-term thinking. We might design the educational system to educate people about future challenges and seek to teach duties of environmental stewardship as well as more traditional civic ideals. Given our tendency to procrastinate and focus only on the problems visible to us now, we might try to institute mechanisms that make the future visible now and induce us to think about the long term. We might, for example, require governments and opposition parties to issue their plans for dealing with long-term challenges and then set aside time in the parliamentary calendar each year to debate them. We might create a Committee for the Future whose role is to monitor legislation for its long-term effects (Caney, 2016). As Dennis Thompson has argued, we might require politicians to conduct ‘posterity impact statements’, which assess the long-term implications of government policies and we could use these to draw attention to the long-term impacts on the environment (Thompson, 2010, 32–3).

p. 299↵Some conclude that democracies cannot address long-term challenges and propose non-democratic solutions. For example, the contemporary Confucian thinker, Jian Qing, argues that democracies will focus exclusively on people’s short-term desires and this will result in ecological disaster (Qing, 2013, 33–6 and 92). On this basis he proposes a tricameral Parliament with a democratic assembly and two non-democratic assemblies (Qing 2013, Ch 1 esp 41–2).

Critics of democracy assume that if politicians are not accountable to the people they will lack the incentive to produce short-term gains to win elections and so can take the long view. This might be true, but then again just because an unelected official can take steps to protect the environment does not mean that they will or are likely to. Why assume that they will care about the long-term interests of their citizens and others? More generally, it is worth bearing in mind the following important methodological principle here:

For any reform it is problematic:

Before concluding, one further point about governance should be noted—namely that many environmental problems are transnational (e.g. cross-border pollution) and some (e.g. climate change) are global. This, of course, raises a new set of normative questions, such as ‘What does democratic decision-making require in a world in which the politicians in one country make decisions (say about fossil fuel use or nuclear energy or the use of rivers and seas) which affect the environmental conditions faced by people in other countries?’ (Goodin, 2008, esp 135ff; Held, 1995; Stevenson and Dryzek, 2014).

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