Stan Cox

None of those hand-me-downs from the last century, including air conditioning, is consistent with the sweeping climate-mitigation policies that will need to be put in place in the coming decades.

Clearly, there’s big trouble ahead and we won’t be able to say that no one saw it coming. In fact, a warning of ecological calamity that made headlines more than 50 years ago is looking all too frighteningly prescient right now.

With the news cycle stuck in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam of sudden, compelling crises and unending wars, world powers seem almost willfully blind to the possibility that the global environment (and with it, civilization itself) is spinning out of control — and not in some distant future but right now.

The enactment of bold new climate policies—bold enough to quickly drive US greenhouse-gas emissions down to zero—can succeed only if we defeat the looming threat of far-right authoritarianism. And today, the nation’s anti-democracy, fossil-fuel-loving political minority appears more determined than ever to gain enough power to turn us into a sweltering autocracy.

The climate movement as a whole, including its increasing numbers of scientists, is collectively brushing off online hatred and turning instead to vigorous confrontation with the sources of ecological breakdown.

Ask a Sudanese or a Syrian or an Egyptian or an Afghan what it’s like to live under autocracy. Then ask marginalized Americans what it’s like to live on the outskirts of democracy. For the latter, democracy is like Sudan’s gold and the Congo’s cobalt. There may be a lot of it, but very few get any.