Is It Time For A New Democracy? For the sake of the environment its a yes!

We need to stop being so humbug and resistant to change and stop conserving a broken democracy. Our politics is bland and stale and is stagnant to change clinging on of what one view of how we should be governed and what democracy means. It is fragile concept we talk about democracy as something that needs to be protected and conserve without actually examine how we can revolutionise the conditional fabrics of what we define as democracy. Its a pejorative centrist or liberal view to accept that we want to restore democracy to a position of pragmatic and mundane rule without any questions of the current system making politics mundane is flawed and something we shouldn’t be aiming for. As tempting as it is we must embrace a changed politics in tone and nature if we are to prevent the threats facing many democracies whether it is totalitarian technocratic states like modern China and companies like Facebook who monopolise on space of an ever-growing online world to profit in developing a platform which is responsible for the data of much of the worlds population but the information citizens have it is such a high cost of responsibilities for Zuckerberg.

People, young people want to see change before we see it too little, too late. Greta Thunberg and her peacefully militant followers galvanising as activists on causal issue like climate change and the environment pitching a stark warning to world leaders who feel failed by the political class shows the extent of the dissatisfaction of young people who don’t see their politicians as the ones who have been capable of bringing around radical change to handle the burden of preventing the worst of the climate crisis and save nature and humanity. Greta and her young angered followers more alert and to social issues than many generations before. No one could imagine young people could bring around such authority and a large voice. Maybe we talk down and belittle young too often?

We do and that has to change.

In opposition to the high speed rail network HS2 linking more faster transport between major cities in the united kingdom comes a staunch opposition from the environmentalist radical group Extinction Rebellion. In dug out tunnels by climate activists sick and tired of the usual means of traditional parliamentary representative democracy. Though it seems Extinction Rebellion’s endeavours can be distasteful and bridging on insanity as they repeat the same attempts to bring around change, this means of activism sitting in trees, sitting in middle of road, blockades have been used over and over without learning to the point the movement reflects Groundhog Day. With none of the radical policies being adopted and words attempted to be heard by Westminster have fallen on deaf years and much of the public frustrated with the actions of anarchic activists who are peaceful yet militant in their activist are more likely stifle and divide people on what they wish to achieve than persuade others to start a conversation.

Frustrated as people are with the actions of extinction rebellion there is a compelling case to be made for a new true and pure democracy as a growing cohort of the population become lost and disillusioned with a stale and stationary democracy that reflects a centuries old Hobbsian state as our representative democracy founded centuries ago with little change with many arguments for our democracy to change and evolve in a natural evolutionary manner but at a more speedily and revolutionary manner as the circumstances present the desire for radical solutions. As our planet faces few crisis the climate crisis that places the need for urgent political, social and economic changes to be made. With more people refusing to stay silent and turn to be more radical and more pro-active on delivering change depicts how our political culture with its institutions grows a skeptical and apathetic public but on the causes that matter closely to them are in fact the opposite impassioned and emotionally invested by the destruction of the planet and the threats that the planet rising temperature could have on both the natural world and society at large. Extinction rebellion shows a civil disobedient protest, a peaceful one in taking the approach Gandhi did to protest and demonstrate in means that is peaceful and non violent. The climate network that is Extinction Rebellion lack the strategy and rational course to achieve their goals of delivering a radical change to how we govern to be able to act in means we aren’t already doing to protect the planet.

Such groups are anti-establishment and depict how we fall to a state of a ‘tyranny of the majority’ the majority who’s approach to the issue of tackling the climate crisis rather than the salient issue it should be kick the can down the road making minor changes in reality protecting the status quo thus depicts the state as a corrupt system if the can is kicked down the road, responsibility gets passed on and politicians are persuaded by those who fund and lobby them. The reason for Larch Maxey and ‘Swampy’ Dan Hooper activist devotees who has spent their lives fighting on the cause through similar means to achieve similar ends to achieve similar means with no reason to expect politicians who’ve ignored them and their cause again to listen to them now. Sitting in a tunnel in Euston protesting HS2, opposing the high speed network their latest stunt from their hideout Maxey managed to find the signal to connect to record a podcast interview with radio broadcaster and disc jockey Annie Macmanus, for her her podcast series ‘Changes’, he candidly opened up about his rather middle class background, childhood bullying and how his children have supported his cause with his son taken up environmental activism who with him are planning their next stunt. Claiming that the government over the matters of the continued construction of the railway in ignoring their protests and condemning them Maxey made allegations that the government have used bullying tactics which make them wish to fight back. A never ending conflict where both side feels at hostage because of holding the other from carrying out their respective ambitions.

Maxey claimed a citizens assembly was all they needed to stop the protests. Simply, a seat at the table at their request; power to the people. The group of climate activists and radical environmentalists are skeptical and oppose and for the intellectual pursuit say they require an alternative state from corporate capitalism and its media. There is a concern with corporate ownership and control of the modern digital means of communications that have risen with the rise of new technologies. Maxey claimed people need to ‘tell and speak the truth’ to act to save humanity. Macmanus on her podcasts ends with asking her guests what changes they would wish to be seen and done within society Maxey made the point he’d like to see a world more connected and more as a collective motivated by common good and kindness seems to empathises his point about wishing to se a direct democracy a more purist form of democracy.

Like Gandhi Extinction rebellion believe in removing the vail of the state to expose its true colours to its citizens to expose its corrupted nature. Rather than class Gandhi’s theory centred around the independence of an individual than a certain group or faction in society. Extinction Rebellion as a movement and organisation is broad with no hierarchical structure but a grassroots democratic coalition focusing on those who are universally responsible for the climate disaster exposing bad actors with out making clear who are the actors. Crisis like the climate, pandemic and capitalism could be met with a humanist approach but that would mean exposing the hypocrisies, the harms the sins within society to evolve and change the nature of our democracy to grow not diminish the natural world.

As in London a small number of protestors protested over new high speed rail networks that would go through the English countryside where temporarily parks would turn to taxi ranks Texas was suffering an unprecedented ‘big freeze’ a snow storm leaving many without power. This crisis demonstrated the cracks in the politics of the climate crisis in America as Republican politicians turn the climate crisis into a culture war and willing to revert to a narrative of how the southern state should continue to burn through fossil fuels than using renewable and nuclear means of producing energy. The Planet is at its warmest in its history yet American Republican politicians see the ‘Green New Deal’ proposed by progressive politicians and environmentalist activists to invest in greener industries to reduce and work more faster to reach carbon neutral targets to prevent further acceleration and to slow down the warming of the planet. Pressures on for Joe Biden to be the environmentalist president in writing his legacy as the world emerges from the economic crisis following the coronavirus pandemic especially to challenge where votes and ideals in American politics are increasingly partisan.

Throughout the discourse over on how solve humanity and the natural worlds greatest threat has always been pictured in a frame of collective politics, a team effort, a collaborative effort. But nations working together may not be the only solution or how this problem could be resolved due to the disparaging nationalistic approaches to such issues when in crisis we often see the interests of the nation before any other nations. Could this avoid the constant spin of the responsibility wheel where little action is done?

After all solutions regarding the climate can come with solving issues nations have on a local level whether it be poverty, housing, industry and economy solutions to climate issues can be found on a national level. Especially when rebuilding the economy of nations who suffered great recessions where austerity is no option the state must use its means to act on its own responsibility if we are to move away from combustible vehicles or gas stoves where the state should use its revenues to invest in changing corporate and individual behaviour to action that delivers.

We must be able to use the reform our state and our democracies to face the issues that are facing us as merely adapting to the crisis for many won’t be an option and would be a cost to the natural world and society at large. We can’t merely stick to the status quo where see our ecosystem for life, society and the economy to dwindle after all its a naive privilege just to think we can adapt without taking radical action to reform our society and expect a safe and secure society for tomorrow. People have grown skeptical of those who hold power to deliver change due to pragmatic and Conservative politics that act as a cushion for the status quo people who see the realities and the science of what is happening to our natural world lose distrust in the politicians in power to deliver seismic change that many of today’s young will have to suffer with the consequences of their actions. Its time to stop the disinformation, self interest to build a sustainable society a state that actually fixes its issues rather than just putting a bandage on the cracks. Our democracies are now a few hundred years old at the birth of modernity for them to survive there needs to be real change for a more purist democracy that works in our densely populated modern advanced digital post industrial society. That doesn’t simply hand power to representatives to do what they please once elected and to have to wait on the next election to dethrone those corrupt who with more resources than the other candidate or party can cling on to power it’s time for the sake of the planet we open our democracies and bring people into decision making that isn’t an elected elite to have a society based on power of the people with collaboration. After all the future of democracies isn’t with the hands of either the individual or the collective consensus but the compromise of the individual within the collective. This is something that is liberal and liberalism at its core if by giving a voice to those who don’t have not we can as a society signal a more liberal democracy as individuals with collectives standing up as social and constitutional changes to liberate more society if are to sustain liberal democracies for time to come if we are to celebrate freedom of speech if by giving voice for the voiceless.