How climate change became a pretext for fascism

How climate change became a pretext for fascism
The collapsing ecosystem creates a feedback loop of famine and war, giving rise to authoritarian leaders

By Matthew Rozsa
Staff Writer
Published November 30, 2024 5:30AM (EST)


(Salon) 2024 was an ominous year for the future of Earth. Climate scientists anticipate that it will be the first year in which the average planetary temperature was 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels, a critical threshold established in 2015 during the Paris climate accord. Meanwhile a 2023 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found humans brought about as many extinctions over the previous five centuries that if our species had never existed, it would have taken 18,000 years for that same number of genera to have gone extinct on their own.

The good news for humanity is that people have the power to stop these mass extinctions and stave off the worst consequences of climate change. The bad news for our species is that we are not doing any of those things; in fact, we are led by science-denying politicians like Donald Trump in the United States, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Javier Milei in Argentina.

Julian Cribb, a British-Australian author who specializes in covering the intersections between science and politics, has published nine books on subjects related to ecocide — the practice in which humans actively destroy their environment. His latest is "How to Fix a Broken Planet: Advice for Surviving the 21st Century," in which he warns that humanity is running out of time to fix the escalating crisis. Among other things, Cribb proposes the creation of a Global Truth Commission to help leaders separate good science and information from bad; technological innovation to wean humanity off of agriculture and create food in more sustainable ways; and strategies that will address all of the threats to humanity’s future holistically, rather than separately. Cribb discussed his thoughts on humanity’s future with Salon.

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In some of your books, you made the link between climate change and these other forms of pollution, but also how they are linked to issues like famine and war.

The way most people are going to feel climate change is in the failure of the food supply, because clearly famine is spreading around the world at the moment. Food price inflation is going through the roof. It's what destabilized America enough for the Trump regime to get in. Trump is a climate impact, believe it or not. Trump is a climate impact, an impact of climate change, because when people get nervous about food availability, the price of food, they tend to vote for authoritarian conservative or right-wing regimes. And that's what's happening worldwide. It's not just in America. It's happening in Australia, it's happening in Austria, it's happening in Hungary — it's everywhere. The world is swinging to the right because of this uncertainty generated by the climate impact on food. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/11/30/how-climate-change-became-a-pretext-for-fascism/