Exceptional Circumstances Does Climate Change Trump Democracy?

摘要

The threats to democracy in the modern era are many. Not least is the risk posed by the widespread feeling among different segments of the public in contempo-rary democracies that no one from the political class is listening. Such discontent reaches from the Tea Party in the United States and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the United Kingdom to the Alterna-tive for Germany (AfD) Party in Germany and the National Front in France. But worryingly, similar sentiments can be found in the scientific community. The robustness of the consensus in the science community about human-caused climate change has in recent years not only increased in strength, but a number of current studies point to far more dramatic and long-lasting consequences of global warming than previously thought. Moreover, it is highly likely that the sophistication and depth of our knowledge about global and regional climates will substantially increase in the next couple of decades. Under such circumstances, how is it possible, many scientists ask, that such evidence does not motivate political action and behavior change in all societies around the world? Why are we waiting?