In a column published in this newspaper at the end of July, the always horny John Müller drew attention to the political connotations of the "climate emergency" statement that President Sánchez and lehendakari Urkullu have recently joined, as well like The Guardian newspaper and countless organizations and municipalities. In Müller's opinion, it is a catastrophic rhetoric that, protected by an ecological threat, "seeks to avoid rational decision-making and circumvent democratic processes." Water carries the river: exceptional situations are the most classic justification for the suspension of the current political order , to the point that even Hobbes - like Rousseau - contemplated the figure of the dictator or temporary monarch to whom an unrestricted power is conferred in order to save the community from an existential danger. This custodian libertatis appeared even in the original formulation of sovereignty, due to Juan Bodino, as noted by Carl Schmitt before defining the sovereign as one who de facto decides whether or not we are facing an exceptional situation. Thus, it is worth asking whether talking about a climate emergency is then the first step in the path of the ecological suspension of democratic guarantees.

It is not surprising to discover that this argument does not represent a novelty in environmental thinking. During the 70s, a decade of environmental alarm today easily traceable in the cinema of the time, an eco-authoritarian current arose within it that pointed without ambiguity in that direction. There was talk then of the "tragedy of the commons" formulated by Garrett Hardin, of the "population bomb" of Paul Ehrlich, of the "limits to growth" of the Club of Rome. And the one who most clearly drew radical conclusions from that new ecological consciousness was William Ophuls, an American writer who combined Hobbes and Malthus when he pointed out that the natural condition of any society is the scarcity of those resources on which its existence depends. Under normal conditions, they must be distributed neatly; If a crisis ensues, the community could disappear and assets such as democracy or individual freedom become dispensable luxuries. Under the pressure exerted by environmental deterioration, resources must be protected by coercive institutions : "Only a government that holds great powers to regulate individual behavior in the name of the common ecological interest can avoid the tragedy of the commons." A green Leviathan! It is a state formation governed, in the platonic line, by "ecological mandarins" endowed with expert knowledge. Hence the political scientist Bruce Gilley has defined authoritarian environmentalism as that model of public power that concentrates authority in a few executive agencies, in turn led by capable and uncorrupted elites whose objective is to improve environmental results.

The truth is that ecoauthoritarianism went out of fashion, without ceasing to remain dormant as an occasional horizon of green thinking. Thus, the consolidation of global warming as an ecological threat of the first magnitude has led some commentators to consider again whether humanity will not suspend democratic procedures to ensure its survival: the Holocene political institutions may not be adequate for the government of the Anthropocene . We find this way with weak forms of eco-authoritarianism that look towards the Chinese example: an autocracy that exhibits ecological awareness and can, as Thomas Friedman himself pointed out in his New York Times column a few years ago, make structural changes more easily than democracies converted - meanwhile - into paralyzing vetocracies. As the philosopher Dan Shahar points out, the new eco-authoritarianism rejects that governments act as central planners while proposing to assign them the necessary power to intervene in the personal life and economic activity of citizens for the sake of climate stability. It goes without saying that this approach, object of John Müller's column, is amplified daily through social networks through a moralizing rhetoric that Greta Thunberg's controversial figure synthesizes perfectly.

But is the fear of environmental authoritarianism justified? Can democracy be the object of an ecological exception that, gradually or abruptly, leads to some kind of sustainable autocracy? The short answer is no, unless there is a real ecological collapse that naturally leads our institutions. And the long answer is this.

There is no doubt that the relationship between environmentalism is problematic. And this for an elementary reason that the political theorist Robert Goodin formulated impeccably: "To defend democracy is to defend procedures, to defend environmentalism is to defend substantive results: what guarantee exists that those procedures will produce these results?" Let's say it now: none. This tension operates primarily on the abstract level and cannot be resolved: if democracy is understood as a procedure based on the majority rule, no result can be assured in advance . In practice, however, environmental political theory is impeccably democratic and has good reasons for this: democracies have a better environmental balance than autocracies and the environmental movement itself emerges within liberal society and not in communist China. The trajectory of the German Green Party is exemplary in this regard: its old defense of post-industrial utopias has given way to a neo-bourgeois reformism that represents the interests of cosmopolitan and urban professionals through formal government coalitions. From the megaphone to the dossier!

Now, is it accurate to say that ecological sustainability, including climate stabilization, is an exclusive objective of environmentalism? It would be absurd to hold such a thing: only a nihilist could be in favor of an inaction leading to planetary disaster. A different matter is that discrepancies arise regarding the implications of scientific observations and the policies that must be put in place to address the socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene. Neither these nor those should not be subject to questioning, although in fact they are for reasons that according to the studies of social psychologists have to do with our ideological alignment: conservatives often reject climate science with the same carelessness with which they embrace it. progressive. There is a worrying trend here, which is the ideologization of environmental sustainability turned into a political weapon of the left against the right and vice versa. It is in this context that the notion of "climatic emergency" makes sense, a catastrophic phrase intended to remove consciousness according to the hyperbolic language with which political messages are packaged in the new care economy . It is possible that some of its adherents wanted to circumvent democratic procedures, as Müller suggests, to impose a concrete version of ecological sustainability. But every ideology, including liberalism, has its extremists.

In fact, the solution involves the constitutionalization of ecological sustainability. That is, by a meta-consensus where we all accept the need to ensure the biogeophysical foundation of our societies without prescribing concrete solutions or adopting particular versions of sustainability. But if there is no single version of sustainability or climate policies, liberal democracy becomes an essential vehicle for its continuous elucidation . This takes place through its different instruments: state regulation, public conversation, business innovation, expert knowledge, technological experimentation, market aggregation. And all this while ensuring, in a more technocratic way and through the different forms of environmental governance, that measures are being taken to prevent irreparable deterioration. There is something about that in the Paris Agreement on climate change, which sets targets for reducing CO2 emissions without prescribing how to do it. The climatic emergency is like Pascal's famous commitment to the existence of God: if we bet everything that does not exist and becomes reality, we lose everything. So we better hire insurance with which to face a risk of such potential magnitude that even the most recalcitrant alarmists are not able to discredit.

Manuel Arias Maldonado is Professor of Political Science at the University of Malaga. His latest book (Fe) Male Gaze. The sexual contract in the 21st century (Anagrama, 2019).

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