Can authoritarians solve our environmental problems?

If you are deeply concerned about our environmental future, if you believe climate change is an existential issue, if you think toxics in soil, water and air are a major contributor to disease and to rapid fertility decline in humans and perhaps other animals, if you believe that the catastrophic decline of insect populations is something more than a convenient development for outdoor living but rather a sign of biodiversity collapse, if you wonder how increasingly over-exploited natural resources including water, soil, fossil fuels and metals can keep up with growing populations and growing demand, if you are worried about some or all of these things, then you may have been wondering in the last couple of decades whether democratic governments will actually do anything significant to reverse the negative trends in these areas.

The answer so far is not much. Perhaps you have asked yourself if the public and corporations need to be forced to do the right things when it comes to addressing our existential environmental threats. Well, democracies can force them with laws; but so far the laws and their enforcement in most countries do not appear to be anywhere near enough to change the crisis trajectory all of human civilization is now on.

That may be part of why more countries are turning to authoritarian leaders. There are, of course, many other reasons: fear of immigrants, fear of crime, poor response to natural disasters, anger over stagnant or falling living standards, and cultural conflict over the role of women and minorities in society to name a few. But when you look at this list you can see that it can be linked in most cases with proliferating climate change effects (such droughts that lead to migration), rising prices due to over-exploitation of resource supplies including energy (which can lead to falling living standards and crime), and cultural retrenchment which occurs in times of societal stress (in this case, the reassertion of male dominance and dominance for racial majorities that feel they are losing out to racial minorities).

Authoritarians succeed in gaining and keeping power when they succeed at solving problems that are of most concern to the people of a given country. If prices are rising, then the authoritarians must get prices under control or go to a system of rations that gives essentials to each family at a subsidized price. If living standards are falling or stagnant, the leader must find a way to boost wages. This is usually done by stimulating the economy to make it grow faster. Closing down borders can keep migrants outside a country, but that closure does not address the causes of the migration which will be increasingly related to the damage climate change is doing to livelihoods in countries whose agriculture is most vulnerable to climate change. And closure of borders to immigrants also reduces the labor supply pushing up the cost of products such as farm goods that rely on immigrant labor. Access to cheaper resources, especially energy, can most readily be pursued by countries with vast mineral and energy wealth—which excludes most countries of the world.

None of these solutions actually addresses our myriad environmental challenges. In fact, most of them make these challenges worse. It is, therefore, hard to imagine an authoritarian leader who tries to stay in power by making demands for material sacrifice—except, of course, in case of war, the starting of which is a favorite strategy among authoritarians for distracting citizens from the failures of the regime. Not infrequently, such wars, if they go on too long, end up leading to popular revolts when the populace realize their lives and livelihoods are being undermined to prop up a dictator. Sometimes they end in outright defeat. World War II comes to mind.

When authoritarian rule fails, sheer force must replace popular support and acquiescence. Rule by force is much more difficult to sustain in the long run than rule by consent. Rule by force often comes to an end when the business class no longer benefits from it and withdraws its support.

I cannot see how authoritarian rule, however enlightened, could seriously address our ecological predicament. An authoritarian leader must first address the immediate problems of the populace which will almost automatically send policy in a direction opposite of that necessary to meet our mounting environmental challenges. Democratic governments, of course, have the same tendencies. The difference is in how decisions are reached and how broadly resources are distributed. If that remains the only difference, then neither current democratic nor authoritarian forms of government will save us from ourselves. (Of course, there are the well-known downsides to authoritarian rule: suppression of free speech; arbitrary detention; warrantless surveillance; weak and compliant law courts; harrassment, arrest and torture of political opponents and journalists; and a host of other civil rights atrocities.)

The only way to soften the coming catastrophe would be a widespread awareness of the need for dramatic downsizing of our way life and the will to do something about it. At present that seems unattainable. Nor does it seem likely that in the near term—for we need action right away—human consciousness can change to meet our existential challenges.