Global Burning advances our understanding of climate politics by bringing our attention to the interconnections between three important global problems: climate change and the natural disasters that follow, the demise of democratic institutions around the world, and the severe inequalities that underpin modern social and economic structures. Darian-Smith uses forest fires that have been raging all over the globe as a symbol to illustrate the deep-rooted connections between these three problems.

More specifically, the focus is on three cases of large-scale forest fires in Australia, the United States, and Brazil. These cases represent instances where fires were deliberately lit (Brazil) or where fires were allowed to burn (Australia and the United States). Drawing parallels between the three countries and their political systems, the author shows that they share a number of features that exacerbated the risk of forest fires and made their consequences catastrophic. The first feature is the lack of robust environmental regulation, the second is extreme inequalities that contributed to climate injustice, and the third is what Darian-Smith refers to as “free-market authoritarianism.”

The author defines “free-market authoritarianism” as “the collusion between political governance and corporate sectors in banking, energy, agribusiness, technology and pharmaceuticals” (p. 25) in “their cooperative efforts to dismantle democratic principles and processes” (p. 73), such as “defunding public education and health, censoring a free press, militarizing the police, suppressing voting rights, and undermining judicial independence” (p. 67). As a result, corporate interests receive more representation in politics, often at the expense of public interests, while weakened democratic institutions make it harder for the citizens to “push back against corporate power” (p. 93) and its antienvironmental agenda. If voters’ interests get suppressed in such systems, we can only imagine how repressed are the rights and interests of minorities that do not necessarily take part in democratic processes, such as indigenous populations and undocumented migrants. These groups are the ones that suffer from the consequences of “free-market authoritarianism” most, being vulnerable to the consequences of climate change (such as forest fires) and unable to push back due to the lack of representation mechanisms.

At the same time, the author makes it clear that the vulnerability of minorities feeds the “free-market authoritarian” system. Corporations enrich themselves on cheap labor, thus gaining even more power and political influence while nationalist political leaders ignore or attack these vulnerable groups with unfavorable policies playing on racist sentiments among their target voters. This makes these groups even more vulnerable and susceptible to climate change impacts, as they usually have to live in poorer areas less prepared for natural disasters. The risk of climate change, in turn, is exacerbated by the close ties between business and politics, as environmental regulation gets relaxed and climate concerns get deprioritized.

The book thus sheds light on a vicious circle between free-market authoritarianism, antienvironmentalism, and inequality. It offers a new comprehensive look at the problems, complementing the previous research that focused exclusively on either the dangers of democratic backsliding, the dangers of collusion between corporations and politicians against climate change mitigation, or the disproportionate impact of climate change on marginalized groups.

This comprehensive overlook is important for understanding the larger picture, but is not void of some ambiguities. One such ambiguity pertains to how Darian-Smith refers to the concepts of democratic and authoritarian rule. In one instance, the author refers to democratic principles as “defending … citizens against environmental exploitation, degradation, suffering and long-term public health impacts” (p. 101). In other instances, she mentions public health and education programs as “elements of democracy” (p. 136). Although environmental protection, education, and health policies are desirable, most comparative political scientists would claim that their absence does not make governments undemocratic. Rather than a set of desirable policy outcomes, democracy is most commonly seen as a set of procedures that makes it “the rule of the people.” Policy outcomes in a democracy instead reflect a constellation of interests that influence decision making.

Citizens are supposed to be the core of such democratic decision making, and close ties between business and politics indeed shift away accountability mechanisms from the public to corporations, skewing the representation toward “free-market authoritarianism.” However, as the author rightly notes herself when citing M. B. Sattar’s 2020 book Greed and Politics Is Burning Down the Lungs of the Earth in the discussion of climate politics in Brazil, “the Brazilian people … were aware of [Bolsonaro’s] intension to destroy large parts of the Amazon rainforest to make way for capitalist development” (p. 112 [p. 44 in Sattar 2020]) and still elected him. Moreover, in all three cases that the author discusses, these were citizens that willingly brought all their political leaders to power, which brings up a question of why people elect leaders that act against collectively beneficial goals. In view of this, what could have been mentioned more explicitly, given that the author discusses the importance of a free press, is the information manipulation that influences people’s policy priorities and political choices.

On a similar note, some political scientists might disagree with Darian-Smith over her conceptualization of authoritarian rule. While countries governed by “free-market authoritarianism,” as classified by Darian-Smith, have embarked on a path of democratic backsliding, it is somewhat preliminary to call them authoritarian. The links between corporations and governments in Brazil, the United States, and Australia might not be a question of a regime type but of economic structures in these countries. As a result of these economic structures, countries underprovide policies that could help deal with climate change and prevent the suffering of societies, but, again, the underprovision of certain policies does not necessarily make political regimes undemocratic.

Despite these ambiguities, the book makes an important contribution to both political science and interdisciplinary discourses on climate politics. It clearly demonstrates the vicious circle of how right-wing populists that gain more power every year can signal their support to corporations with antienvironmental interests and thus exacerbate the problems of both climate change and inequality, which makes the impacts of climate change more catastrophic. Such illustrations are crucial for developing our understanding of how to break this pattern.

Perhaps not explicitly, the book also makes an important contribution to the long-standing debate on whether democracy is a suitable system for tackling climate change or whether it should be replaced with a more efficient authoritarian alternative. The book points to the fact that the shift to authoritarianism in the modern age is driven by populist leaders whose common feature is not only ultranationalism but also antienvironmentalism and withdrawal from multilateralism. As climate change is a global problem that requires multilateral agreements and compliance with these agreements through countries’ environmental political agendas, the current form of authoritarianism, toward which many democracies are sliding, is certainly not the answer.

Future research can draw inspiration from Darian-Smith’s book and continue exploring the links between right-wing populism, antienvironmentalism, and inequality in other countries to confirm that these worrying trends are a regularity and are not bound to the selected cases. Future studies can also explore whether connections between corporations with environmental interests, such as renewable energy businesses, and their sitting governments, can bring hope for climate action.