Deadly global alliance: antidemocracy and anti-environmentalism

Abstract

This essay explores the connections between the global rise of antidemocratic governments and the escalation of the human-driven climate emergency. As political leaders and corporations (particularly those in fossil fuel and energy industries) work together in the pursuit of profits and power, anti-environment policies that favour these industries have become politicised and weaponised. We see this occurring in many liberal democracies as well as in more explicit autocratic regimes. Focusing primarily on the United States under former US president Donald Trump, it is argued that the rolling back of environmental policies facilitated by his antidemocratic government connects the political erosion of liberal democracy with the corrosion of the environment. Degradation of the environment in turn accelerates the negative impacts of climate change, disproportionately harming marginalised and racialised communities from lower socio-economic backgrounds. The implications of this deadly alliance between accelerating environmental destruction and the weakening of peoples’ electoral rights and ability to oppose anti-environmental policy in the Global North and Global South are nothing short of catastrophic.

Keywords:

• Antidemocracy
• authoritarianism
• fossil fuels
• extractive capitalism
• neoliberalism
• far-right

Acknowledgements

I thank Philip McCarty for his provocative intellectual engagement and the very helpful comments from the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I use the term ‘antidemocracy’ rather than other terms such as autocracy, authoritarianism or populism to avoid endless definitional discussion. As a term, antidemocracy covers a wide spectrum of governmental policies and decision-making ranging from mild to extreme forms of oppression that undermine core democratic principles including aspirations of social equality, political accountability and representative government.

2 This finding is based on interviews with over 48,000 people in 34 African countries between 2019 and 2021. Afrobarometer, https://www.afrobarometer.org/about/

3 This includes crude oil, all other petroleum liquids and biofuels. US Energy Information Administration, https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6

4 Fueling anti-environmentalism among the public are widespread disinformation campaigns as well as elaborate conspiracy theories such as those pushed by QAnon that circulate through global social media. Over the years Trump has been a vocal supporter of QAnon as have some of his political allies. Stuart Thompson, journalist for The New York Times, has noted that the spread of disinformation no longer involves family members sharing fake news on social media platforms. On the contrary, he goes on, there is a lot of money involved and ‘It's a very organized machine at this point …. It's not just a fleeting interest spurred by a few partisan voices. It's an entire community and social network and pastime for millions of people’ (Hounshell et al. 2022).

5 For a revealing – and horrifying – interactive map about the 1540 land and environment defenders who have been killed around the world since 2012, and the extractive industries linked to their deaths, see Global Witness Report, ‘In Numbers: Legal Attacks against Defenders Since 2012’, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/numbers-lethal-attacks-against-defenders-2012/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eve Darian-Smith

Eve Darian-Smith is Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Studies & International Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is an interdisciplinary scholar trained in law, history and anthropology and is interested in issues of postcolonialism, human rights, legal pluralism, authoritarianism and democracy. She is an award-winning author and teacher and has published widely, including 13 books and edited volumes. Her latest book is Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis (2022), which won the Association for Humanist Sociology 2022 book prize. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation and American Philosophical Society. She co-edits the book series ‘Global and Insurgent Legalities’ with Duke University Press and is on the editorial boards of six leading interdisciplinary journals.