3 crises we shouldn’t waste 

It seems counterintuitive to be thankful for crises, but they can teach us something. They are stress tests that reveal our vulnerabilities. And, as the man said, they are terrible things to waste. 

There is no shortage of crises from which to learn today, but three have reached existential importance: the loss of faith in democracies, civilization’s assault on nature and the long but still-growing threat of nuclear war. 

This year is critical to mitigating these crises or allowing them to worsen — possibly past the points of no return. 

Let’s start with democracy. By one count, at least 70 major elections are being held worldwide in 2024, including several that will decide the fate of democracies. Fewer than 8 percent of the world’s people live in full democracies today compared to nearly 40 percent under authoritarian rule. The rest, including the United States, are considered hybrid or flawed democratic regimes. 

World leaders are watching the U.S. election closely to see whether the oldest existing democracy survives or whether Americans choose a president with totalitarian instincts and little respect for the alliances free nations have built to avoid world wars. 

Since he entered national politics in 2015, Donald Trump has severely stress-tested America’s commitment to its Constitution, social cohesion and common decency. Trump is emboldened to talk openly about the end of democracy because nearly two-thirds of Americans are dissatisfied with it. 

The unstated ballot question in November is not only whether the American people are willing to save democracy but whether they have the resolve to fix it. Trump’s stress tests have helped reveal an agenda for reforms, including limits on campaign finance, ideological balance on the U.S. Supreme Court, iron-clad protection of voting rights, term limits for judges and legislators and clarity about a president’s responsibility to obey laws. 

The second existential crisis is the increasing danger of nuclear weapons proliferation and brinksmanship. “Nuclear war is often described as unimaginable,” an op-ed in the New York Times pointed out recently. But “in fact, it is not imagined enough.” 

In recent years, leaders like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Trump have engaged in irresponsible nuclear trash talk. Now, U.S. voters must decide whether Trump should have unchecked authority to launch nuclear weapons. America’s presidents have had sole authority to launch nuclear attacks since 1948. 

Now, the danger of nuclear war is growing in Ukraine, and conflicts are brewing in the Persian Gulf, the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula. A Times editor writes, “The possibility of a nuclear strike … is more likely now than at any other time since the Cold War.” 

Editors at The Economist warn that Trump’s apparent lack of commitment to alliances like NATO “threatens to sow chaos at a time when the world’s nuclear balance is more unstable. …That could produce the nightmarish nuclear free-for-all that America has always sought to avert.” 

“In 2024, the candidates’ approaches to these dangers deserve more scrutiny than usual,” according to Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “Presidential leadership may be the most important factor that determines whether the risk of nuclear arms racing, proliferation, and war will rise or fall in the years ahead.” 

Global warming will be another factor, raising the temperature of tensions between nations. U.S. military officials have warned for years that climate change is a “threat multiplier.” That brings us to existential threat number three. 

Global warming is a result of civilization’s assault on the planet. It is only one of nine “planetary boundaries” civilization is in danger of crossing. Nations have addressed many of them with goals and agreements, but they are voluntary and often ineffective. “The world is awash with good intentions” but dangerously short on results. 

Six months ago, despite nearly $400 billion in federal funds being invested in clean energy under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), almost two-thirds of Americans worried about the climate’s impact on their communities. More than 70 percent said the federal government should cut America’s climate-altering pollution in half over the next six years. Yet, in the 32 years since the U.S. Senate ratified the international agreement to counter global warming, Congress has done little to loosen the grip of the fossil-fuel industry.  

Now, Republicans are trying to repeal the clean-energy incentives in the IRA. 

The U.S. Supreme Court gave the fossil-fuel sector and other corporations a priceless gift in 2010 when it declared that campaign spending is free speech protected by the Constitution. The court’s majority argued naively that campaign donations don’t influence how elected officials vote. 

By the 2017-18 election cycle, the oil and gas industry spent nearly $360 billion on lobbying and campaign donations — about $500,000 per day, and $13 for every $1 America invested in renewable energy. In the current campaign cycle, oil and gas companies have already spent nearly $13 billion on congressional races and $133 million on lobbying. 

As we consider how to fix democracy and governance, we should ask what the Constitution would be if we wrote it today. The Founders could not have anticipated 250 years ago that we would create and tolerate technologies so polluting and weapons so awful that they threaten the planet’s ability to support life. They surely hoped we would elect leaders who believed in and protected their noble experiment to give citizens the power to decide their nation’s future. 

William Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP), a nonpartisan initiative founded in 2007 that works with national thought leaders to develop recommendations on national climate and energy policies. He is a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy.