“We might now be living through the first moment in history when the preservation of capital and the protection of the commons are structurally aligned… This may not be about overriding democracy. It’s about upgrading it for survival.” Zsolt Lengyel
Willy De Backer || Following my recent post on the ICJ climate ruling and the Juncker curse, climate policy advocate Zsolt Lengyel has made an extraordinary argument: we need “Central Climate Authorities” that are “politically insulated” from “populist cycles” to save both capitalism and democracy from climate collapse.
His logic seems straightforward: climate breakdown now threatens capital itself, so capitalist elites finally have incentive to act. Therefore, removing climate policy from democratic control becomes “upgrading democracy for survival.”
Three moves to justify technocratic climate governance
Zsolt uses classic rhetorical strategies:
- Personal immunity: “Having grown up behind the Iron Curtain… I know what authoritarianism looks like” (therefore I cannot be advocating it);
- Historical inevitability: “Even Marx would be stunned” that capital and climate are now aligned (framing elite rule as unprecedented necessity rather than predictable class interest);
- Democracy-to-save-democracy: We must “protect democracy from collapse” by insulating policy from democratic choice.
His arguments follow emergency politics playbook: manufacture crisis, claim unique historical moment, position temporary suspension of democracy as democracy’s salvation.
The “bounded versus unbounded” political divide
This illustrates what I have called the new political divide between “bounded” and “unbounded” thinking. Zsolt advocates ‘unbounded technocracy’, seeing democratic resistance as obstacles to overcome rather than constraints to work within.
His “upgrading democracy” means removing inconvenient democratic choices. His “climate policy independence” means freedom from popular sovereignty. Liberation severed from the very democratic foundations that make legitimate governance possible.
The deafening silence of radical climate policy defenders
But here is what troubles me most: where are the degrowth advocates? The system-change community? The post-capitalist thinkers? I got no real reaction by any of them on my provocative questions regarding the ICJ ruling.
While green growth defenders openly embrace climate eco-technocracy, those calling for radical transformation remain strangely quiet about the governance paradoxes. They seem unwilling to engage with the ugly tension between reimagining democracy and avoiding technocratic solutions.
This silence tells us something important. Perhaps they recognise that genuine system change would face even stronger democratic resistance than current climate policies. Perhaps they are paralysed by the contradiction between their democratic values and their recognition that radical transformation might not be democratically viable in the short term.
Scholars like Philipp Staab explore “protective technocracy” as a potential middle path, but the broader system-change community seems to avoid these hard questions entirely. There is a strange ‘Big Silence’ from the eco-emancipatory movement these days. I will write something more substantial on this Big Silence later.
The inconvenient question: who gets to speak about governance
This Big Silence leaves the field open to Zsolt’s (and others) approach: using climate emergency to preserve capital accumulation while bypassing democratic constraints. Green capitalists trying to solve our civilisational crisis by abandoning politics.
Meanwhile, those who understand that climate breakdown requires fundamental system change remain paralysed by democratic legitimacy concerns, unable to articulate governance alternatives.
The result? The most anti-democratic climate solutions come from those most invested in preserving the system that created the crisis. And the most radical climate thinkers offer silence when we need new models of democratic participation most.
We need climate governance that accepts democratic legitimacy as a constraint to work within rather than an obstacle to overcome. But that requires system-change advocates to engage seriously with questions of power, participation, and institutional design, moving beyond critiquing capitalism, patriarchy or colonialism from the sidelines.
The question becomes: can we develop democratic innovations adequate to our ecological crisis, or will we let green technocrats “upgrade” democracy into irrelevance? I must admit I am struggling with this question myself too. I would love to hear your imaginative ideas!
#ClimateGovernance #Democracy #SystemicTransformation #ClimatePolicy #PoliticalEcology #ClimateJustice
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