Global Democracy and the Resort to Despotism: Global Democracy Revisited

Abstract

There exist existential global problems we cannot solve unless we resort to a world government. It is desirable that such a government can be held responsible by a democratically elected world parliament. Hence, global democracy is desirable. However, the road to global democracy is blocked by similar problems that render it necessary in the first place: collective decision problems of a different but related sort. And time is short. In particular we face an emergent need to tend to problems to do with global warming. This means that we have to investigate the possibility and desirability of a last resort to global despotism.

Introduction

Global democracy, with a world government, has much going for it. It has long been acknowledged that a world government, holding monopoly on the use of armed forces, could keep peace in the world (in analogy with how peace is kept in well-ordered nation states). A world government would also be able, if not to create global justice, so at least to mitigate some of the most glaring injustices on the globe. Finally, a world government would be able to obviate various existential threats, in particular the one posed by global warming. And, of course, if we were to resort to world government, it would be fine if it could be democratic. Hence, global democracy seems to be a worthy political aim. This is the main thrust of the argument in my book.¹

So Why Has Global Democracy Not Been Established?

One must wonder why global democracy has not long ago been established.

Some object to global democracy in general and a global government in particular on a principled ground. Such institutions are not desirable, not even if they could achieve all the above envisaged good things. There exists a tradition dating from Immanuel Kant to John Rawls arguing that global government is not desirable.²

In the present context, I will be brief in my discussion about this objection to global democracy. I have argued against it in my book and the idea that, for principled reasons, we should forego something that might save humanity. In a historical setting, when today’s global threats had not materialised, things may have appeared differently. In the present situation the idea that for principled reasons we should forego global democracy strikes me as not only wrong, but obscene. If global democracy can serve as a means to the rescue of civilised life on the globe we should not easily set it aside. And, certainly, we should not set it to one side only because we happen to dislike the very idea. Or, is this really so? I will indicate in separate paragraphs why I think the rescue of humanity, many important philosophers' arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, is a worthy goal.

But did not Kant present an important argument in defence of his rejection of a world government and a global democracy? He did not? Here is his argument:

For the laws progressively lose their impact as the government increases its range, and a soulless despotism, after crushing the germs of goodness, will finally lapse into anarchy.³

This observation that the laws progressively lose their impact as the government increases its range, may be true of some laws pertaining to certain issues. But then the global government should avoid these issues and so should the legislating body do. As we will see, however, there exist global problems such that, because of difficult collective action problems, it is impossible to deal with them on a less than global level. So, if my argument below is correct, then with regard to these (global) issues, the Kantian argument is simply and flat-earthly wrong.

Kant was also a critic of democracy, which he saw as a form of despotism, but I will not in the present context go into that discussion. Here I just take it for granted that the best form of global government is in the form of a global democracy.

However, need we worry about the future of humanity? We need to do so if, as I have done, we base our argument for global government on the assumption that it, and it only, can save humanity. The idea that the global government should be democratic is really secondary to the main existential question. How can we save our human civilisation?

Does It Matter If Humanity Survives?

Some influential philosophers have argued that it doesn’t matter if humanity survives. Two lines of argument has been put forward in defence of the claim. One of them takes it point of departure in populations ethics. It goes like this.

Regardless of what we do, there comes a day when humanity will cease to exist. There comes a time when there will be no sentient life at all in the universe, regardless of what we do. Does it matter if doom comes sooner or later?

It makes no difference, according to this line of thought. The last generation will have a tough time but when it is gone there is no one there who can raise a complaint about what happened. And there is no way of avoiding that there will be a last generation.

It doesn’t matter when doom comes. It is of the utmost importance, however, that doom presents itself to those who have to experience it in a civilised and as little painful manner as possible.

Typically, moral rights theorists, basing their thinking on some ‘actualist’ notion of morality, argue in this manner. According to actualism, only persons who have existed, do exist, or will as a matter of fact come to exist, matter from a moral point of view.

We are allowed on this view to propagate and to have children, but we have no obligation to do so. Again, if we do not, then there is no one there who can raise any legitimate complaint. Yet, we do not enjoy complete licence in our reproductive decisions. According to this view it wrong to conceive children who have lives worth not living. These children will have a reasonable complaint to raise against our decision to put them into existence. To avoid the existence of such persons we had better set an end peacefully to the world.

From a total utilitarian point of view, urging us to maximise happiness in the universe, not only by making existing people happier, but also by making happy people, the moral situation of the global government appears very different. It is of the utmost importance that humanity is saved, even if only for some further thousands of years. Even if the cost to the incumbent generation is heavy it should be imposed on it. And even if in the final analysis only a few persons can be saved now, it is urgent to save them, in order to render possible that they propagate and engender many future happy generations.

Whose perspective is the correct one? The total utilitarian one is the correct one. This is not the place to argue that point. I will just indicate how I have defended this position.

First of all, consider the following scenario. I have an option between two alternatives. I can conceive one child, who will as a matter of fact live a life just worth living. No better than that. This will be the last individual in the universe. Or, I can conceive another very happy child who will in turn have happy children … in the final analysis this means that many happy generations will come to live because of my decision to have this very happy child. These are my only options. In particular, there is no way that I can avoid conceiving a child.

We may think of the latter option for a happy child and a long and happy succession of humanity as a kind of default position (in analogy with the famous trolley case where as a matter of fact the trolley will kill five innocent people if I take no action, only that the outcome of the default position in my example is a nice one), and the former as a possibility that will materialise if I take action to achieve it (again in analogy with the trolley case where this option is similar to the one where I can divert the trolley onto a side-track where it will kill one person; only that in my present example the outcome is innocuous, no one will be killed, the person conceived will live a life—barely—worth living).

On the actualist moral theory, I may do as I see fit. If I bother to opt for the single child with a life just worth living, then this is all right. There will be no one there who can complain about my decision. After all, the child I conceived lives a life (just) worth living.

My intuition is that this is absurd. It is wrong to go for the single child in the envisaged circumstances. Now, the content of this intuition, that it is wrong in the envisaged circumstances to go for the single child, is best explained with reference to total utilitarianism.

In order to show that this is so, that total utilitarianism provides the best explanation of the content of my intuition in this case, it is necessary to debunk the intuition that what Derek Parfit has nicknamed the repugnant conclusion is indeed repugnant. Moreover, to show that utilitarianism provides the best explanation of the claim that it is wrong to go for the single child in the envisaged circumstances, one would also have to provide arguments in defence of the acceptability of the repugnant conclusion. But it is possible to do so. I know since I have done it.⁴

Another argument to the effect that we do not need to save humanity is based on pessimism. And this argument works well in combination with utilitarianism. We need to save humanity only if the continued existence of our species on earth means in the long run a net sum of happiness (over unhappiness). Some philosophers, of a prioritarian bent, would require even more, i.e., a substantial positive surplus. They claim that even a life with a net positive sum of happiness may be worth not living since the suffering it contains weighs heavier that the happy moments.⁵

Are we allowed to believe in such a substantial sum of happiness over unhappiness? I think so but admit that this is highly speculative.

Many philosophers have argued against the optimistic hypothesis and in defence of pessimism; it would have been better for most (all) of us if we had not been born, they claim. It starts in antiquity with Socrates, and continues with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and, in present time, with Chirstoph Fehige and David Benatar.⁶ To give just one eloquent quote from a representative of this intellectual tradition (taken from the most eloquent among them, Nietzsche) stressing the pessimistic point:

The very best thing for you is totally unreachable: not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing. The second best thing for you, however, is this — to die soon.⁷

I think this is wrong. All the pessimists are wrong. Given the way evolution has wired us, it is reasonable to assume that we (sentient beings who can feel happiness and pain) have been wired in a manner that grants that we are, on the whole, quite happy with being around. Not all of us, of course, and not all of the time, but most of us, most of the time.

It is a bit troublesome, though, that many clever thinkers have argued that it is not a good idea to save the world. I continue my argument on the assumption that the rescue of humanity is a worthy political goal, however. And I believe most (ordinary) people agree about this. If I am right, a world government, based on a global democracy, seems to be able to deliver what we need. It would be able to handle pressing and even existential global threats. And still it has not come about. Why?

The Blocked Road to Global Democracy

The explanation of why it has not been established has nothing to do with how global democracy would work, if put in place, but everything to do with transition problems. The sad truth is that the same fact that would make a global democracy sustainable, once in place, and indeed its raison d’être, renders it difficult to establish. When we want to establish it, we end up with similar, but slightly different, collective action problems that render global democracy necessary in the first place.

We need a global democracy precisely because the problems I have referred to, to do with war and peace, global injustices, and global warming, can only be overcome if we have access to global legislation. Individual nation states face a ‘tragedy of the commons’ problem when they attempt to solve these problems through cooperative schemes. All citizens of the world would be better off, as compared to where they now stand, if a global legislation were in place but, in the absence of such an order, the citizens of each individual nation have to rely on ‘their’ politicians. And ‘their’ politicians need to tend to the needs of ‘their’ citizens, not the needs of the globe, if they want to stay in power.

The sad fact is that, even if a global treaty of some sort is better for all than the existing anarchistic situation, which it is obvious that it is, the best option for the citizens of each nation state is when the rest of the world carries the burdens and an exception is made for them. This is what the citizens in each nation states want their representatives to strive for.

It is in the interests of the citizens of each state that ‘the others’ do as much as possible to obviate the global problems here referred to, then, and that ‘their’ governments take on as few burdens as possible. Thus, they can reap the fruits of the burdens carried by others without having to carry corresponding burdens themselves.

The same argument applies to each nation state. And it applies partly also to the transition problem. This is how it works.

How Could a Global Order be Established?

It is difficult to switch to a global order. Again, this has to do with coordination problems. It would have been fine to have a global order, this state is superior to the existing global anarchy, but it is not in the interests of any single nation state, or the citizens forming it, to give up its sovereignty, or its military capabilities, at least not until it is clear that the global order is clearly materialising before their eyes (it is not enough that it presents itself as is a nice possibility). It is not tempting for an individual nation to give up its military forces, for example, unless it is confident that all the other nations do the same.

The fact that an institutional order is optimal does not guarantee that it will be implemented. It will only be implemented if there is a viable path to its establishment, where each step can gain support from most individuals.

No one has to date been able to suggest such a roadmap to global democracy.

My Suggestion

In my book I put forward such a putative roadmap (to global democracy). It was overly naïve. The idea was to proceed on two different tracks. A parliamentary assembly should be created in the UN. And states with safe borders should be encouraged to give up their military defence in exchange for guarantees for their security. Instead of the national defence they gave up they should provide some military resources to the United Nation, under the command of the Security Council (in accordance with the original but never realised plan behind its establishment).

The idea was to run the two processes in tandem. Gradual disarmament, the building of military forces under the command of the United Nations (the Security Council), and democratisation of the United Nations as such. The end state would be a directly elected parliamentary assembly, legislating for the globe, and electing a world government (replacing the now redundant Security Council) in command of all military forces.

All this may seem fine as it is here adumbrated, and it may even seem feasible, granted we are given many centuries to reach the desired goal: a global democracy. However, given the threat posed by global warming, there is a lack of time. It is necessary therefore to query whether a quicker and yet feasible way exists to establish the crucial aspect of the desired system: the world government.

For reasons to be discussed below, to do with self-reinforcing feedback, it is highly likely that our time on the globe will soon be up unless we act against global warming. Could this fact provide us with new ideas about how to proceed quickly to establish the necessary global order?

It seems that, in relation to global warming, there are two questions a global government would have to tackle. First of all, it should deal with the consequences of the present and future effects we have already given rise to through our past and present emissions of greenhouse gases. Secondly, it should hopefully help us to obviate total disaster by helping us to put a stop to further emissions.

It is far from clear, however, how the time pressure could help us to establish a desired global order. It is even possible that it will turn out to be an obstacle in its own right.

The Problems We Have Already Created

Take first the most pressing problem: how should we deal with the effects that are bound to come, given what we have already done. These effects are well-known but seldom discussed. An exception is David Wallace-Wells. During the summer of 2017 references to his article, ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’,⁸ in New York Magazine, appeared many times in social media. He gives a vivid, even if controversial in details, picture of our near future (this century).

During the fall of the same year we got access to the most recent report from the World Meteorological Organization. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surged at a record-breaking speed in 2016 to the highest level in 800,000 years. The abrupt changes in the atmosphere witnessed in the past 70 years are without precedent.

Globally averaged concentrations of CO₂ reached 403.3 parts per million in 2016, up from 400.00 ppm in 2015 because of a combination of human activities and a strong El Niño event. Concentrations of CO₂ are now 145% of pre-industrial (before 1750) levels, according to the Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.⁹

Moreover, almost at the same time we received the news that, after seemingly having stabilised at an unprecedented high level, our CO2 emissions are again increasing. According to the University of East Anglia Global Carbon Project:

CO₂ emissions have now risen for a second year, after three years of little-to-no growth from 2014 to 2016. The rise this year is projected at 2.7 per cent (+1.8 to +3.7 per cent). In 2017 it was 1.6 per cent.¹⁰

Already at 2050 difficult problems are facing us. This is from a recent World Bank Report:

This report, which focuses on three regions—Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America that together represent 55 percent of the developing world’s population—finds that climate change will push tens of millions of people to migrate within their countries by 2050. It projects that without concrete climate and development action, just over 143 million people—or around 2.8 percent of the population of these three regions—could be forced to move within their own countries to escape the slow-onset impacts of climate change. They will migrate from less viable areas with lower water availability and crop productivity and from areas affected by rising sea level and storm surges. The poorest and most climate vulnerable areas will be hardest hit. These trends, alongside the emergence of ‘hotspots’ of climate in- and out-migration, will have major implications for climate-sensitive sectors and for the adequacy of infrastructure and social support systems. The report finds that internal climate migration will likely rise through 2050 and then accelerate unless there are significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and robust development action.¹¹

It is highly unlikely that significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions will take place immediately. So, probably we have to live with these consequences. How should we react to them? How will we react to them?

And, of course, there is more to come. When finalising this paper, I happened to have read a report which has just been published:

We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a ‘Hothouse Earth’ pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies.¹²

Similar messages were sent from the IPCC when a conference in Katowice in December 2018 was in preparation. Enormous and immediate measures must be taken if we want to stay below the goal of 1.5 degrees. When this article was finalised the meeting had not taken place. It is not a daring guess that the reader will have noted that it turned out a failure. And we know why: the tragedy of the commons-problem faced by the parties to the conference. Moreover, the most devastating consequences are still not visible to us. Hence, it is difficult for us to take action. What will happen once they become visible and conspicuous?

Possible Reactions?

There are roughly two main possibilities that open up when it is clear and visible that global warming does pose an immediate threat to most of us.

This is one of them. It is not far-fetched to assume that rich and comparatively sheltered countries will close their borders. When the costs of helping refugees rise, when there is a feeling that there is too little room for immigrants, a xenophobia, strengthened by bad conscience, will take a hold on the populations. And each national government will see it as its mission to tend to the interests of its own citizens. The collective decision problem identified above will deepen. This scenario is most probable if the change is fast, though gradual, say it takes place over 50 years, and can be attributed to multiple sources, including human action. A possible comparison here is with the Syrian refugees.¹³ Everything started with climate change (drought) which led people to move into the overcrowded cities, and people have for long tended to conceive of it as a traditional conflict. So, given this possible development the prospects of an immediate transition to global government are bleak. And this spells problems for the very idea of a global government. Moreover, on this development many people on the globe will face disaster.

Eventually, this road leads to the end of civilisation on the globe. It does so precisely because we would on this scenario deepen the collective decision problems we are facing.

Could one not just build on existing institutions, at least when dealing with the problem with climate refugees? It is perhaps not a good idea to just build on the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The UNHCR is already blatantly under-funded regarding these refugees. But why not create a new convention dealing with climate refugees and also new methods of raising funding for their needs? This is an idea put forward already in 2010 by Frank Biermann and Ingrid Boas:

With a view to existing institutions, we argue against the extension of the definition of refugees under the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Key elements of our proposal are, instead, a new legal instrument specifically tailored for the needs of climate refugees—a Protocol on Recognition, Protection, and Resettlement of Climate Refugees to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—as well as a separate funding mechanism.¹⁴

The main problem with this putative solution has to do with realism. There will be a reluctance among the leaders of independent nation states to take on the necessary burdens in order to have the system work in an efficient and fair manner. Some steps might well be taken along the suggested lines, but it is overly naïve to believe that they will suffice. If we do not bother to take care of ‘ordinary’ refugees, why should we be expected to bother any more with climate refugees?

On another and more radical and optimistic note, one could speculate along the following lines. Propitious for such a development would be a different onset of the disaster, like the sudden collapse of the glaciers on the West Antarctica, which is impossible to conceive of as an ordinary conflict.¹⁵ When it becomes obvious that the existential threat is real, some global authority will step in and start to handle the problem. And the problem is precisely the collective action problem here discussed. Something of the sort seems to be recognised in the above quoted paper by Will Steffen et al.

Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.¹⁶

However, the authors do not indicate in any way what form this collective action is supposed to take. It is here that I have come to think differently from when I wrote my book. I will now put forward a putative solution, lacking both in my book and in the above-mentioned paper by Steffen et al. This idea is indeed very different from the road-map I draw up in my book. A claim in the book was that global democracy can be established in a gradual reformist and democratic manner finally electing a world government. I now want to turn the tables and suggest that we should proceed in the opposite order. First the establishment of a world government, then gradual work towards global democracy.

The window of opportunity is closing quickly, regardless in which form disaster first appears to us. I now put my hope, as a last resort, in an enlightened despotism. Some global authority will initiate a coup d’état and, usurping the existing global anarchic world order, create a global one in its stead. It will certainly not be democratically elected. It might enjoy support from many people on the globe, however. It is plausible to assume that it already exists, capable in due time of taking on its mission. But which institution is most likely to listen to the call?

Those versed in conspiracy theories are likely to point to, if not at the Illuminati, so at least at the Bilderberg Group. But that group lacks both economic and military resources. The same is true of the World Economic Forum.

Next in line may be the thought of an institution like the World Bank (already concerned with problems to do with global warming). It doesn’t lack economic muscle. However, it lacks military power, and even if in a sense it can be said to represent the global economy, the votes among its member states have a strong Western bias.

This means that it can hardly gain global recognition in the desired role.

This leaves us with the traditional answer: The Security Council of the United Nations. I think of this institution as it exists at present, not of any futuristic ideal construction.

In order for it to be able to seize power, the people representing respective nations in the Council would have to collude on a personal level, hopefully with a tacit support from each government. I got the idea when I saw them meeting in the Spring of 2018 in a Swedish mansion, Backåkra, once belonging to Dag Hammarskjöld. It dawned upon me that they consisted of a group of living ordinary persons.

A presupposition, if they are to succeed, is that the veto right will not be exercised by any nation against the establishment of the necessary world government—or should we more cautiously say ‘proto-world government’. Or, rather, that the members of the council will not execute such an order from its government.

It is of note that, if such a coup takes place and succeeds, it means a kind of existential leap; the nations brought together through the coup has no interest, when it is a fact, to try to escape from its rule. This is so because of the simple fact that now they do not exist any more. This scenario presents us with a strange game theoretical problem. Once the game has reached this step it means ‘game-over’ for all sovereign nation states.

Some politicians may want to reinstate the sovereign nation states, but the global authorities will not allow this to happen. There is no manner that the players can ‘buy new lives’. A global government, established in order to handle pressing global problems, will not allow any free-riding from anyone. There will be no right to secession from the newly established global order.

This means that there is no tragedy of the commons any more. The only collective decision problem that has to be handled when the global order is established is to do with the process up to the point when the order is established. This is different from a negotiated treaty among sovereign national states which can at any time break down.

It is crucial that this proto-world government, once in place, restricts its ambitions to the problems engendered by global warming and to these problems only. Otherwise it will soon fall into disrepute.

Once in place, such an enlightened despotic proto-world government would not only have to arrange with subsides to the life of environmental refugees but also to see to it that they are distributed to countries (parts of the world) that are still habitable. Of course, it would also have to design a scheme for the fair distribution of the economic burdens caused by its decisions.

Why should these nation states yield to its demands? I suppose the Security Council would be able to enforce its regulations with the aid of threats of heavy economic sanctions and even military force unless it had its way. Even if at this stage it would have no military forces of its own at its disposal, it would be able to engage mighty member states in its initiatives.

However, a global despotism is probably unstable. It would have to find ways to gain legitimacy. But then it is natural to assume that it will seek legitimacy by offering democracy. The idea to create a world government, based on the UN institutions, to which the proto-world government already belongs, might then come to be seen as a solution. And now the idea of a more democratic organisation might gain support.

A nice fact is that the general assembly of the UN can vote to amend the constitution in the desired manner. The ground for this claim is the wording of Articles 108 and 109 of the UN Charter. According to 109 the UN was to convene a review conference by 1955 which did not happen. As a consequence, The United Nations General Assembly can convene a Charter review conference based on Art. 109 para. 3 by a majority vote if the Security Council agrees by a vote of any seven members (no veto applies). However, the outcome of the review would have to be ratified by two-thirds of the Members of the United Nations including all the permanent members of the Security Council (a veto right does apply).¹⁷

To understand the possible process in this direction we should remind ourselves of Bob Goodin’s optimistic ‘model’ for the development of global democracy:

Basically, the model I shall be offering is that of a ‘slippery slope in one direction’. There are two particularly salient features of the process I shall be discussing:

• First, from time to time there emerges some crisis, to which expanding the range of people to whom power-holders are accountable is sometimes a solution.

• Second, accountability mostly only expands, it almost never contracts.¹⁸

In particular when we turn from the question of how to handle the consequences of the harm we have already done to the question of how to stop us from making our situation even more desperate, i.e., to the problem of how to solve the existential question, global democracy may appear to be the best shot.

My present suggestion avoids an obvious problem with Goodin’s model. The model is designed with reference to, and inspired by, how we know that democracy has been established within nation states. However, this means that the beginning of the process envisaged by Goodin towards democracy is the existence of a well-defined ‘demos’, an existing state. It is different with global democracy. We do not yet have access to even a despotic global rule. And even if the UN is global in its ambitions, in a sense, it is still not a truly global political entity. It is rather an association of independent nation states, each one seeing to its own best interests. Hence the collective decision problems facing it when it is supposed to deal with truly global matters.

On my suggestion, the first step to global democracy is the establishment of a global despotism and together with it a global demos, i.e., a global political order. Hence, once this proto-world government is in place, there exists an entity to democratise.

But will it come about? Will such a coup take place?

I am moderately hopeful. I will now give my arguments for this assessment.

The Turn to Global Democracy

In order to get the global despotic government in place, two conditions need to be met.

First of all, there needs to exist a global popular movement supporting and working actively for collective action in relation to the existential threat.

Second, the national governments, who have sent their representatives to the Security Council must avoid using its veto against its ‘takeover’.

These two points may seem realistic, given the extreme circumstances—just think about something like 2-meter higher sea levels—when the transition takes place, and a situation where we see how reinforcing warming mechanisms are at work. And given the first point, the second seems very realistic. However, is it at all reasonable to assume that a majority of the population of the globe will take necessary action?

It is not, but this is not necessary in order to achieve the desired end. Revolutions, not even successful ones, rarely actively involve a majority of the population. Here are some figures from the Arab Spring:

In Egypt, 8 percent of the sample reported participating in revolutionary protests, compared to 16 percent of those surveyed in Tunisia.¹⁹

What is needed, then, is an active popular support from people in the most influential nations across the globe, i.e., the nations that are for the time being represented in the Security Council of the United Nations. We may be witnessing the advent of such a world-wide movement with the Global Climate Strike For Future initiative inaugurated by Greta Thunberg.²⁰

If the global despotic government needs to impose heavy burdens on the global population, then it would be rational for it to strive for global democracy in order to gain recognition and de facto legitimacy and in order to obtain a willingness from people on the globe to make joint sacrifices in order to save humanity. The existence, then, of a parliamentary assembly, regardless of how it had been elected, would be helpful, if this assembly did support its initiative. There would probably be popular support for the establishment of such an institution in the envisaged circumstances, if it is not already in place, in particular if it is advocated by the Security Council that it be elected.

The goal, providing the rationale behind the proto-world government, namely the rescue of human life on the globe, would indeed be recognised by most as a noble one. And it is likely that people will be willing to contribute to it. At least this would be so, given two important caveats.

First of all, each individual should feel secure that the others would also take part in the joint effort.

Second, each one should feel that the burdens necessary to the success of the project would be carried out in a fair manner.

Both these caveats presuppose something like global democracy, where the legislation is for the globe and where it is binding on all citizens on the globe. This could be effected by the parliamentary assembly, now hopefully elected directly by the global population.

The second caveat presupposes that the burdens and benefits have been distributed in accordance with a fair and transparent procedure involving everyone, at least in the sense that your vote has been counted. It is here that Goodin’s slippery slope argument kicks in.

Global democracy, and global democracy only, can satisfy these requirements.²¹

Notes

1 In this article, I ’revisit’ my book Global Democracy. The Case for a World Government (Edinburgh University Press, 2008/2014). All references to ‘my book’ are to this book.

2 John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hacket, 1983).

3 Immanuel Kant, 1991, ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose’ and ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,’ in Political Writings, trans H.B. Nisbet, ed. Hans Reiss, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press), 41–53 and 93–130, p. 113.

4 Torbjörn Tännsjö, ‘Why We Ought to Accept the Repugnant Conclusion’, Utilitas Vol. 14, 2002, pp. 339–59, reprinted in Jesper Ryberg and Torbjörn Tännsjö (eds), The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population Ethics (Dordrecht. Kluwer, 2004).

5 I discuss this in Torbjörn Tännsjö, Setting Health-Care Priorities: What Ethical Theories Tell Us (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019).

6 For Socrates, see Plato, Apology: there are many editions available, even on the Internet; Arthur Schopenhauer, ‘On the Sufferings of the World’, in The Meaning of Life, ed. E.D. Klemke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, ed. Michael Tanner (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1994); Christoph Fehige, ‘A Pareto Principle for Possible People’, in Christoph Fehige and Ulla Wessels (eds), Preferences (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998), pp. 509–43 (1998); David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

7 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, (1872/2017), translated by Ian Johnston, Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, Britsh Columbia, http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/nietzsche/tragedyhtml.html

8 David Wallace-Wells, ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’, New York Magazine, July 9, 2017.

9 ‘Greenhouse gas concentrations surge to new record’, World Meteorological Organization, 30 October, 2017, https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/greenhouse-gas-concentrations-surge-new-record

10 University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Global Carbon Project, ‘Strong growth in global CO₂ emissions expected for 2018’, press release, https://www.uea.ac.uk/about/-/strong-growth-in-global-co2-emissions-expected-for-2018

11 Kanta Kumari Rigaud et al., ‘Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration’, 2018, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29461, accessed 31 March 2018.

12 Will Steffen, Johan Rockström, Katherine Richardson, Timothy M. Lenton, Carl Folke, Diana Liverman, Colin P. Summerhayes, Anthony D. Barnosky, Sarah E. Cornell, Michel Crucifix, Jonathan F. Donges, Ingo Fetzer, Steven J. Lade, Marten Scheffer, Ricarda Winkelmann, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, ‘Trajectories of the Earth System in Anthropocene’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (33) (August 14, 2018) 8252–59, abstract.

13 I owe this observation to Folke Tersman.

14 Frank Biermann and Ingrid Boas, ‘Preparing for a Warmer World: Towards a Global Governance System to Protect Climate Refugees, Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 10 (2010), pp. 60–88. The quotation is from the abstract.

15 I thank Folke Tersman also for this observation.

16 Steffen et al., ‘Trajectories of the Earth System in Anthropocene’, again quoted from the abstract.

17 I owe this information to Andreas Bummel. For a discussion, see Mahmoud Sharei (Shahryar) Reconstructing Article 109(3) of the UN Charter: Towards Constitutionalisation of the United Nations and International Law (PhD thesis, University of Kent, 2016).

18 Bob Goodin, ‘Global Democracy: In the Beginning’, International Theory, Vol. 2 (2010), 175–209, p. 188.

19 Mark R. Beissinger, Amaney Jamal, and Kevin Mazur, ‘The Anatomy of Protest in Egypt and Tunisia', Foreign Policy, April 15, 2013, https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/15/the-anatomy-of-protest-in-egypt-and-tunisia/

20 See https://www.fridaysforfuture.org for information about the strikes.

21 I thank Katharina Berndt-Rasmussen, Folke Tersman, and Attila Tanyi for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.