Can Democracy Handle Climate Change? by Daniel J. Fiorino
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702019876378 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
they were adversaries. In such an environment, would any Canadian leader today
be able to work the kind of persuasive magic that Mulroney did in the 1980s?
Daniel J. Fiorino
Can Democracy Handle Climate Change?
Polity Press: Cambridge, UK, 2018. 143 pp. $54.00 (cloth)
ISBN: 13: 978-1-5095-2396-2
Reviewed by: John Kirton (john.kirton@utoronto.ca), Department of Political Science,
University of Toronto, Canada
The global climate crisis is the most compelling issue of our time, as the very
existence of human life on the planet could well be at stake. This striking, sobering
conclusion is affirmed by the mounting scientific consensus, as offered by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in October 2018 and others’ subse-
quent reports. The scientific evidence is confirmed by the direct experience of ever
more people suffering from extreme weather events—most recently, the historically
high heat waves across Europe, Russia, India, and Alaska, and the flooding US
Midwest in the summer of 2019. It is accepted by the central global governance
bodies, led by the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate
Change, which at its historic summit in December 2015 produced the Paris
Agreement to limit the world’s temperature increase to less than 2C and ideally
1.5C above pre-industrial levels very soon. With the increase already at 1C and
rising rapidly, there is very little time left.
In his admirably clear, readable, and balanced book, Can Democracy Handle
Climate Change?, Daniel Fiorino thus asks a key question, especially at a time
when US president Donald Trump, currently leading the world’s second largest
democracy and climate polluter, has decided to withdraw from the Paris
Agreement, and disputes the science on which it is based. The question is rendered
more potent by the rapid rise of India, the world’s largest democracy, whose eco-
nomic and population growth, air pollution, and droughts now outstrip those of
non-democratic China, the world’s largest climate polluter. It is also pertinent to
Brazil, whose new president Jair Bolsonaro is seen as a ‘‘Trump of the tropics,’’
opening to development the vast forests of the Amazon that do so much to seques-
ter carbon. And, the polls show, the issue has become central for Canadians, as
they consider who will govern one of the world’s most ecologically rich but fragile
countries after their federal election on 21 October 2019.
Fiorino carefully considers the evidence to arrive at a convincing conclusion:
democracies do best at controlling climate change. He adds that they will need to
do better in the years ahead, in a world where climate change and global warming
are rising and where democracies are now in decline.
Fiorino begins by accurately identifying the acute threat posed by accelerating
climate change and why efforts to control it through government action constitute
a highly difficult challenge, especially for democracies. People and their politicians
484 International Journal 74(3)
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