Are dictatorships better than democracies at fighting climate change?

IT IS NOT just that Asia accounts for the greatest proportion of the world’s carbon emissions, with China the biggest emitter, India the third-biggest, and Japan, South Korea and Indonesia all among the top dozen. Asians are also the most vulnerable to climate catastrophe, with melting Tibetan glaciers, less predictable rains upon which its farmers depend, and fiercer storms and rising sea levels threatening huge, sinking megacities such as Jakarta, Manila, Mumbai and Shanghai.

By and large, national governments in Asia acknowledge the challenge. A baneful exception is Australia, whose conservative government is running away from climate commitments. Its failure to show the way in cutting emissions has only reinforced an argument which, increasingly, Asian environmentalists as well as self-serving autocrats make: that a crisis as severe (if man-made) as rising temperatures can be mitigated only by the firm smack of authoritarian rule. Democracies huff and puff and, prey to vested interests and voters’ distaste for hard choices, ultimately shirk the task.