Whether they know it or not, the Right has a climate change plan, and they're enacting it

[Recursion]

Remember, it was oil companies that first made some of these discoveries about carbon, and then tried to cover it up. The funders of the Right know perfectly well the seriousness of the climate crisis we face. And they have a solution.

What else do you think the global populist movement is?

Global populism, from Narendra Modi to Viktor Orbán to Brexit to Donald Trump, is nothing but that: the global rich trying to build new systems they can benefit from as the world warms. This is why it's so much about controlling population movements, because mass migration is a guaranteed feature of a 2 degree warmer world. That's why the chief "values" of the movement are tribalist: as expanding resources turn into contracting resources, tribalism is the easiest way to control those resources' distribution.

Liberal representative governments will face insurmountable challenges as a population that is used to more, more, more must be told less, less, less. This is why you see the structural changes the likes of Trump, Orbán, and Modi are making: they are building a right-wing edifice they hope will survive the new situation. This is their climate change plan: pick an ethno-nationalist group, privilege it, and use its prejudices to police resource usage and funnel it to the top.

[yonder]

1. That privileged group also misguidedly believes they will be able to maintain that privilege.

For a while they might but eventually that "right-wing edifice" will come tumbling down too, victim to an exponential entropy they created themselves. At the end, perhaps a few will recognize that folly but by then the wheels of the world will be smashed, with nothing left but rocks and sticks.

Personally, I have been losing hope at an ever increasing rate.

[PETRUS]

2. That's a very interesting line of thinking.

I don't really have a response, just wanted to thank you for posting.

[cutroot]

3. Their plan is to make it worse.

[hunter]

4. Right wing U.S.A. will be shocked when they don't come out on top.

The largest military in the world won't save them.

[Recursion]

5. Won't it?

I'm more pessimistic than you. I think it might.

[hunter]

6. I wouldn't bet against some sort of in-name-only "communism."

The mobs will want to see the bloody heads of a few right wing billionaires on pikes, and some general or left field populist will step in and deliver.

That's not optimism.

[PETRUS]

9. Have you read "Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future" by Wainwright & Mann?

David Wallace-Wells referred to it in his book, "The Uninhabitable Earth." Apparently, the authors believe some political outcomes are more likely than others, and think the results will depend largely on people's level of commitment to capitalism (on the one hand), and national sovereignty (on the other). I'm inclined to read it at some point, but haven't yet.

[Calculating]

7. The wealthy simply don't care

Look at movies like Elysium as an example of what they expect from the future. They think they'll be hiding out in walled off luxury resorts or bunkers while the rest of us die. Me, I don't think it will go as they expect.

[gratuitous]

8. It's playing out in a small way in Oregon

The legislature is ready to pass "cap and trade" legislation similar to that enacted by California. Republicans in the Senate are threatening to walk out rather than lose on this issue. One of them even threatened the Senate President and any state troopers who might compel him to show up in the Senate chamber and do his job. Don't worry, though; Senator Boquist is white, so his threat to shoot law enforcement officers isn't terrorism.

Anyway, "cap and trade" in its Oregon form will apply to the worst of the worst polluters initially. Republicans are selling fear and ignorance that if this bill becomes law, all business in Oregon will cease immediately. Or something like that. They've ginned up their rural constituents to think that this is all some commie socialist police state nazi (don't ask) plot. But having seen over the years the toxic dumps left behind by industry all over the state, this is a tough sell. When the state goes looking for the perpetrators, the corporation is dissolved and the principals vanish with the money they've looted. Who's left to clean up the mess? Taxpayers, of course. What "cap and trade" does is cause polluting industries to make cleaning up their own mess part of their business plan. Horrors! You can see why log truck drivers descended en masse on the state capitol yesterday to protest against this bill. Or maybe you can't. But the truckers are certainly pissed that the wealthy men pulling their strings might have to be financially responsible in a small way.