Green Reads: Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis

“…politicians are collaborating with big businesses, presenting in turn a new set of political conditions that challenge resistance to climate change by ordinary, and increasingly disempowered, citizens. Bushfires graphically bring into focus these political conditions and the underlying antidemocratic, antiegalitarian and racist values that sustain them.”

- Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis by Eve Darian-Smith

Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis by Eve Darian-Smith focuses on the devastating wildfires, or ‘bushfires’, that took place between 2018 and 2021 in Brazil, Australia, and the United States. While wildfires as natural disasters are certainly nothing new, the increased frequency and severity seen in recent years speak to an alarming ‘new normal’. Global Burning recognizes how legislators and world leaders are directly responsible for this climate collapse through the blatant denial of scientific evidence, negligence, deregulation, and allowing the intentional burning of land by loggers.

Eve Darian-Smith cites ‘extractive capitalism’ as the driving force of political and environmental decay. The pursuit of national superiority among global powers prioritizes the economy and industries that deteriorate the environment and exploit the citizenry. Smith asserts that political leaders often collude with billionaires and the one percent to achieve and maintain political power and profit, thus allowing the involvement of non-elected persons in legislation that promotes their respective industries, with no regard for its impact on land or laborers.

In Global Burning, we investigate the divergence between everyday persons for whom the climate crisis is “almost universally” recognized and national leaders who reject the reality of the threat and actively legislate against possible solutions. In many cases, policies that address and aim to combat climate change are drafted and not administered, or otherwise, slowly implemented to little effect, while policies rolling back protections and rewarding environmental harm in the name of industry are swiftly and strictly adhered to. Eve Darian-Smith encourages us all to acknowledge the structures that value stakeholders over wildlife and the well-being of humanity.

What can we do?

1. Grassroots organizing
2. Fund research
3. Address disengagement
4. Counter misinformation
5. Scale back extractive capitalism
6. Change cultural values to prioritize people and planet over profit

More recommended reading on the subject 

• Environmental Human Rights in Earth System Governance: Democracy Beyond Democracy by Walter F. Baber, Robert V. Bartlett
• Struggles for Climate Justice: Uneven Geographies and the Politics of Connection by Brandon Barclay Derman
• Global Climate Governance by David Coen, University College London, Julia Kreienkamp, University College London, Tom Pegram, University College London
• Pathologies of Climate Governance: International Relations, National Politics, and Human Nature by Paul G. Harris