Deadly global alliance: antidemocracy and anti-environmentalism

Abstract This essay explores the connections between the global rise of antidemocratic governments and the escalation of the human-driven climate emergency. As political leaders and corporations (particularly those in fossil fuel and energy industries) work together in the pursuit of profits and power, anti-environment policies that favour these industries have become politicised and weaponised. We see this occurring in many liberal democracies as well as in more explicit autocratic regimes. Focusing primarily on the United States under former US president Donald Trump, it is argued that the rolling back of environmental policies facilitated by his antidemocratic government connects the political erosion of liberal democracy with the corrosion of the environment. Degradation of the environment in turn accelerates the negative impacts of climate change, disproportionately harming marginalised and racialised communities from lower socio-economic backgrounds. The implications of this deadly alliance between accelerating environmental destruction and the weakening of peoples’ electoral rights and ability to oppose anti-environmental policy in the Global North and Global South are nothing short of catastrophic.