A royal reminder of climate policy’s democracy problem.
A royal reminder of climate policy’s democracy problem.
A t a time when the monarch, James I, “the wisest fool in Christendom,” believed in the divine right of kings, it was perhaps tactless of the English jurist John Selden (1584–1654) to write:
A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness’ sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat . . .
Commentary such as this meant that Selden spent a short time in the Tower of London. Nevertheless, he lived long enough to see James’s son, Charles, being found surplus to requirements. And, if Selden’s ghost is still around, it will have noted with some satisfaction how monarchy, where it has survived, has typically evolved into an effective way of helping secure the “quietness” — if not always in more gossipy sections of the media — that ought to be a characteristic of a properly functioning democracy. In theory, if not necessarily practice (this is not a deferential age), the monarchy is the embodiment of the nation — and its continuity, a living “banner,” as Lenin put it in a rather bloodier context. But in both theory and practice, the crown must be a unifying force, and, therefore, above politics. What members of the royal family say in public should be bland and uncontentious. Royalty’s political views should be private, and a matter of guesswork, even if that guesswork is not always too difficult. It was no great secret that Britain’s late Queen Mother, the last Edwardian, was not exactly a supporter of the Labour Party.
With the notable exception of his appearance alongside Neville Chamberlain on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in the wake of the Munich Agreement, George VI, the current queen’s father, generally adhered to that principle — and so, almost always, has his daughter Elizabeth.
Her son, Charles, however, seems to feel hemmed in by this idea, presumably as it is an affront to his well-developed sense of self-importance. Charles has been sharing his thoughts with the rest of us for a long, long time, whether on architecture, the environment, “organic” food, homeopathy (#science!), or on talking to plants. Sometimes he’s been right, and sometimes he’s been wrong. (Say what you will, the food brand he established does make some good biscuits.) His Prince’s Trust charity has carried out some truly remarkable work, too.
Unfortunately, Charles has failed to understand that his opinions have any significance only because of what he is, not because of who he is. If he were just Charlie Mountbatten-Windsor, he wouldn’t get much of a hearing, but because he is the prince of Wales, he does. If he were just Charlie Mountbatten-Windsor, he wouldn’t have become a Davos regular, but because he is Prince Charles, he has. And because he is Prince Charles, he is being held out as a key figure in the launch of the “Great Reset” — a proposed remodeling of the global economy on supposedly more sustainable lines — despite his enjoying a lifestyle known neither for its asceticism nor its light carbon footprint. Then again, who could not be impressed by the fact that he has converted his Aston Martin so that it now runs on (English) white wine and whey? Well . . .
Charles’s environmentalism — among other causes — has led him to cross the line into the political, almost certainly knowingly and, it seems, increasingly. This Vanity Fair article from May 2020 provides an excellent example of what a prince of Wales should be doing (at least in a time of lockdown):
As the pandemic continues, Charles has also been connecting with the British people in more casual ways. On Wednesday, the Clarence House Instagram featured a video of his beehives to celebrate World Bee Day. Next Monday, he will be a guest DJ on the Classic FM radio station in order to bring awareness to struggling orchestras across the country. In the two hour set, he will feature songs from some of his favorite classical musicians.
But the same article also gives an excellent example of what a prince of Wales should not be doing:
Charles has shifted his attention to the world stage, announcing a project he’s calling “Great Reset,” which will call on world leaders to fix global problems made urgent by the pandemic.
And,
according to the Telegraph, Charles has been working with Klaus Schwab, the WEF’s founder, on projects to help shape recovery from the pandemic. “The Prince believes that as countries and businesses around the world look to rebuild after this crisis, there is a unique but narrow window of opportunity to accelerate the sustainability agenda in a way that puts people and planet first,” a spokesperson for the initiative told the newspaper. “Before industries simply return to the old ways of doing things, this group, led by the prince and Professor Schwab, is setting out to show we have a chance to recover by doing things differently and with a lot less negative impact on the world we live in.”
That sounds more than a touch political. But even if we accept the fiction that this is “just” about protecting the environment, politics enters the picture when considering how that goal is accomplished. Where should priorities lie? Consider an example drawn from the climate field: How much should be spent on improving resilience and how much on an accelerated energy transition? Take another: What trade-offs should be made between attempts to change the climate and attempts to preserve the economy? To be sure, the #science can assist in the decision-making process. But ultimately these are policy decisions, and in a democracy, policy is — or ought to be — determined by those elected in the polling booth, not by technocrats, and not by princes lacking democratic legitimacy, scientific expertise, or much grasp of how economies operate.
And yet here is Charles discussing what should be done in a speech he made in early 2020, just before COVID struck the West in full force. First, one must wade through the McKinseyspeak that someone probably gave him to read: “For me, sustainable markets offer a new systems-level framework which ground markets in a higher purpose mission — in other words, putting people and planet at the heart of global value creation.” Beneath all that, though, it is evident that his vision of the economy includes making use of other people’s money, a vision that is nothing if not political:
There are trillions of dollars in sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, insurance, and asset portfolios looking for investible and sustainable projects with good long-term value and rates of return. It is time to align sustainable solutions with funding in a way that can transform the market place. This requires not only showcasing high potential investments, but that we reimagine financial analysis, structuring and models of return.
What “reimagining financial analysis” means is messing with the numbers in a way that enables those managing people’s pensions or other savings to dilute their responsibility to deliver superior risk-adjusted return by adding alternative “metrics” to the way their performance is assessed. These relate to the environmental and social effect of those investments, metrics that will not put dinner on a retiree’s table — not that such a thing would ever be too much of a concern for Charles. Unsurprisingly, the prince is an enthusiast for what he refers to as “corporate social and environmental responsibility,” phrasing that could embrace both ESG — a form of “socially responsible” investment whereby potential investments are partially scored by the extent to which they measure up against certain environmental, social, and governance yardsticks — and stakeholder capitalism.
Stakeholder capitalism is an explicit rejection of the idea that a company’s management owes a primary responsibility to its shareholders — those people who, you know, actually own the business. Instead, those who run a firm are supposed to run it for the benefit of vaguely defined “stakeholders,” which, one way or another, frequently include environmentalist interests, even if not (quite) yet “nature.”
Both ESG and stakeholder capitalism are expressions of corporatism, an ideology that has manifested itself in forms that range from the benign, as in post-war West Germany, to the malign (it was an important part of the intellectual theory that underpinned 20th-century fascism). The more climate warriors use and abuse corporate power to bypass the usual democratic controls to push forward with their agenda, the closer they come to corporatism’s darker past, in which those in charge routinely made use of a harnessed capitalism. Under the circumstances, it was not entirely reassuring to read that
Prince Charles . . . urged world leaders to take aggressive action to fight climate change, likening it to a “military-style” effort that requires major private investment.
“We have to put ourselves on what might be called a warlike footing,” the 72-year-old royal said in his opening remarks at the United Nations COP26 meeting in Glasgow.
“We need a vast military-style campaign to marshal the strength of the global private sector with trillions at its disposal,” the Prince of Wales added.
Oh.
But, in some ways, the most telling passage in Charles’s speech was this:
I have dedicated much of my life to the restoration of harmony between humanity, nature and the environment . . .
The notion that our species has ever existed in harmony with nature and the environment is a bizarre, but not uncommon, fantasy. If there is a “mother” nature, with her earthquakes, plagues, and all the rest, she has a good deal of Mommie Dearest about her. Charles’s fantasy, though, is something subtler — one that is discernible in his pronouncements and projects through the years. He appears to yearn for that pre-industrial, pre-capitalist society in which princes were taken seriously. And it seems as if he has passed on that sentiment to his sons, at least to a degree. The condescendingly preachy declarations emanating from the younger of these petulant princes — Harry — ought to be of no interest to anyone, but it has been disappointing to watch the elder, William, second in line to the throne after all, seemingly trudging down his father’s path. That was most evident in his sour and ill-informed attack on the increased involvement of the private sector in space — an attack that was wrapped up in the language of climate hysteria, but is perhaps better regarded as a reflection of William’s resentment over the obstacle that modernity poses to what he believes should be his position.
Of course, modernity poses little threat to the status of royals who accept the modest role they are expected to play in a constitutional monarchy. But that role has not been enough to satisfy the vanity of Charles, William, and Harry. More completely than he probably originally intended, Harry has cut himself off from the entitlements of royalty if not of celebrity, and that will eventually reduce what clout he still has; Charles and William, on the other hand, still seem to hope of finding a way of using their royal station for political ends without going through the bother of getting elected. (The latter, incidentally, has also been spotted at Davos.)
That’s where “climate” comes in. Not only is the essentially pre-modern message of harder-line climate campaigners in sync with the dreams of the heir to the British throne and his sons but the post-democratic methods of many of those shaping climate policy — corporatism is only a part of it — have created a space in which princes can make themselves heard. Charles was invited to speak at the recent G20 summit in Rome; he gave a key address at COP26 in Glasgow; and he even got to meet with Jeff Bezos “to discuss climate change.”
In a rare misstep, even the queen decided to enter the fray, issuing a video message in which she urged the leaders attending COP26 to “rise above the politics of the moment, and achieve true statesmanship.” This included recognizing that “the time for words has now moved to the time for action,” an odd comment given how many billions have already been spent — in the West, anyway — in the name of tackling climate change, but the suggestion that “nothing” has been done is a recurrent trope in climate-warrior rhetoric. Naturally, “the children,” and, as this is grave business, the grandchildren, were brought in to bolster Elizabeth’s argument: “We are doing this not for ourselves but for our children and our children’s children, and those who will follow in their footsteps.”
The queen is, and rightly so, a deeply respected figure in Britain. Her intervention will carry some weight, but it is more significant for what it is intended to symbolize. If Elizabeth, who is meant to keep clear of politics and is, famously, a stickler for rules and convention, weighs in on the need to deal with climate change (and, by implication, in ways in line with the establishment view) the underlying message is that this has become a matter that transcends any political divide, or as the queen herself so grandly put it, it rises “above the politics of the moment.” To say this is both constitutionally presumptuous and democratically questionable is an understatement. However, it is fully in keeping with the ruling-class orthodoxy that not only is the science “settled” but so is the appropriate response to what we may be doing to the climate. The former is not quite so clear as sometimes asserted, and to make that claim with regard to the latter is simply absurd.
Climate policy can easily affect countless aspects of human activity, and, as alluded to above, it will often have to incorporate momentous (and complex) trade-offs. It is a field where more democracy is needed, not less. This may explain why so much effort is being dedicated to ensuring that the voters are sidestepped lest they choose a course that is felt to be scientifically inferior or, maybe, offers fewer opportunities for power and (in certain cases) profit than the current direction. This is an effort in which (to name only a few of the democratically unaccountable who are helping out) regulators, central banks, Wall Street, Big Business, and, yes, the British royal family, are involved.
The queen should have known better, but at the age of 95 and after nearly 70 years on the throne, she should be cut a lot of slack. The same cannot be said for either Charles or, even, William, but there is little to no chance that either will do the honorable thing and renounce their inheritance, a renunciation that would allow them to speak their mind without compromising their constitutional obligations. Some sacrifices are apparently too great, planet or no planet. Inertia and tradition, and — republicans will be disappointed — the absence of an obvious non-monarchical alternative with sufficient backing, will probably keep each, when the time comes, on the throne, even if they continue to pontificate on topics that as constitutional monarchs they should not, despite the damage it will do to an institution of which they are nothing more than stewards. But neither Brits nor anyone else should pay them too much attention. If these royals’ role is to be living banners, then their political views should be of no more relevance than those of any other piece of cloth.